i HATE holidays.

What does Christmas Time mean to you? Scratch that.. What do the holidays mean to you if you celebrate them? Is it all just a cliche, and another hallmark holiday season for all the stores and economy to boost up sales and gain money?

- People may now that I am not big on the holidays. It stems back from when I was a child, It's tough opening up in a blog because I don't want people to judge or pity me for who I am or what I have experienced in the past. That's the key, it's ALL in the past. I am who I am today because of it but I also know that I came from nothing and that's it, it's just nothing. There are only a handful of people who truly know me for who I am and about the past.

Honestly - I USED to love Christmas. Being born and raised into a Catholic-Vietnamese family, my mother was super religious when it came to her faith. She always made us go to church on Sundays and if we couldn't make it because of weather, I remember she'd make us stay in our rooms and beds until we said our prayers 50 times. She's been raised this way, and it's just in her family's blood to have such faith in God, and the Catholic religion. She I don't have a lot of memories of her, but my mind has photographic memories that play into movies when I think of her, or see a picture. It's really weird how it's like a movie in my mind that plays back. Sometimes it can get really depressing but sometimes it's nice to lay in bed next to my boyfriend and just cry and reply all the good memories I had with my mother.

She always made Christmas extremely special for my brother and I. I remember putting up the Christmas Tree at a young age, and we'd get all dressed up in our Christmas Sweaters, and candy canes and pose in photos. I actually still have one of our family photos in the original frame to this day sitting on our bookshelf in the living room. My dad is so young in it. I'd say He was in his late 30's/early 40's, and my mother was only 2 years behind him. I was such a daddy's girl and my brother was such a mama's boy. I wish I had a video cassette player sometimes, when my dad got remarried in 1997, I went into his room and stole old videos from my childhood. It's been years since I've seen them, but I still like to know that they are with me. I used to play them all the time only on the day that she had passed every year, but then I realized that I missed her voice a lot, so I'd play it from time to time. Even writing about the videos make me want to dig through the boxes and run to Walmart to get a video cassette player real fast.

Anyways - back to Christmas.. What a great time of the year. I remember being a kid and being so excited to get presents on Christmas morning, then having my moms sister, and her kids over or going up to their place. I remember decorating the house, and how my mom would make crazy yummy Asian dishes! The house just smelt amazing. She was such an amazing cook. I guess that's why when I go back to Connecticut, I always want to go to my Aunt's house because she is the only person who has ever, EVER made Vietnamese food like my mother did. I mean, given the fact that they are sisters would explain it. I'm so grateful for my aunt, she's also my God Mother. She's been such an amazing woman, she made a promise to herself that she'd always look after my brother and I after my mom passed. I'm even more thankful that her kids, my two beautiful Cousins, shared their mom with my brother and I. I used to go there when I was old enough by myself for the summer to spend with the girls. I always hated my step mom and my dad and I had an estranged relationship, and I wasn't close to my dad's side of the family or my brother so I felt like I was more wanted by my Aunt and two cousins. So I always went up there instead. It was hard to feel excepted by anyone but them. I always felt in the way, or never good enough to be apart of my dad's "new" family.

At first after my mom passed, things didn't change drastically. We still went to my dad's side of the family for Christmas and had a blast there. I guess where things really started to change was when my dad got remarried. You see my step mom was never accepted by my dad's side of the family because she had always caused SO much drama between my cousins and my aunts and uncles that, no one ever liked her. No one still does. She'd go and lie about stuff to my dad to make her look good and then blame it on his sisters being so mean to him and etc. stupid stuff like that basically pulling him away. But I don't blame my dad. I mean what do you do u? You're with this woman that you love and she is your wife, she's carrying your child, who's side do you take? I felt so bad for my dad sometimes because he was always stuck in the middle of all the drama. All he wanted was a family again, he missed his first wife, and she got taken away from him so soon. My mom was only 41 when she passed, my dad was 43. He waited til he was 47 to get married again, even then he wanted more kids. Tragedies happen, but life's too short to dwell on them...why life in the past?

As for the past 13 years I have not celebrated Christmas. I'd always go over a friend's for a sleepover, or just lock myself in my room. My cousins on my dad's side still made an effort to come over and drop off gifts for my brother and I until I turned about 16 or 17. My dad started to make Christmas all about my half brother. Granted I don't blame him since Louie was the youngest one and Christmas is always special for kids. But it would have been nice to be included in the things that your family does. My dad stopped buying us presents and he'd only invite us to eat what was leftover what they had, had. Most of the time Phil and I wouldn't care. It just became this slow seclusion, and it wasn't special anymore. But to me it was okay because I already knew that in that house there were two families separated.

So when I moved out on my own, I still had the attitude that I didn't like Christmas for that reason, and i still don't. The first year I lived out here in Michigan my roommates tried to make it so special for me. My best friend who I moved out here with, her sister, and her sister's (then) girlfriend, and her child. It was special because for the first time in years I felt like sometime went out of their way to make me happy on that day because they wanted to, and I didn't feel disowned. About a year later I moved out into my own apartment. I got another roommate (my now best friends husband) Adam. I spent that Christmas with his family. Still I didn't feel apart of anything. And of course it still wasn't the same. The year after that I was alone. I had lived with another roommate, and she went back to her family to Chicago. She had invited me to go along with her but honestly I just thought what was the use? I still hated Christmas and no matter what I was going to be alone anyways so it didn't matter.

I always felt awkward tagging along to other people's families for Christmas. Turns out a guy that I had been seeing came over, and spent the night watching Christmas movies and hanging out with me at my apartment. He invited me over to his family's but I told him it was okay I just wanted to be by myself. He showed up in the snow after Christmas dinner with his family, and told me "no one should be alone on Christmas". SWEETEST thing ever. We never got serious though but to this day, I still have never thanked him for doing that for me. I mean granted he's married and living his happily ever after right now, and I'm in a relationship but I still can't believe a person who I barely even knew, did that for me.

Now my Christmas is spent with amazing people but still I will always feel like I don't belong. Jim's family is amazing. They've come to adopt me into their family. This will be my 4th Christmas with them. I will always get sad.. around this time of the year, I can't help it. I appreciate Jim so much for trying so hard to make it a special time for me. He'll never truly understand how it feels to be me, but he does try really hard to change things and make them better for me and that's all I could ever ask for from him.

The other day we got into a tiff before putting the Christmas Tree up. Of course my temper and anger shoots up in less than .5 seconds ALL the time because I'm irrational when it comes to my anger, yet again another thing I just can't help. He didn't see why I was upset because for the past 3 Christmas' that we've had together, he still hangs up ornaments and decorations that he did with his EX wife. I thought Christmas was supposed to be about starting our OWN traditions, with our OWN decorations and ornaments.. He didn't understand why it bothered me so much. I will always have an issue with him having an ex wife because HE has been there, HE has done this before, HE has been married before. I haven't. I haven't done any of this. I don't want to be the replacement girl that he just takes to places that she's been. I want us to go to new places. I want us to start new traditions. It hurts my feelings because it's like he's hanging onto a past that will never be again.. And also it's so disrespectful, I told him it would be like me, going out of my way to put up pictures of my exes all over OUR house that WE pay for to have THEIR memory in OUR HOUSE. I would never do that to him. For him to put up ornaments that share a memory with HER on OUR tree that WE pay for, in OUR house that WE pay for, to me is disrespectful. He said he didn't know that it bothered me that much. I told him no wonder why I hate Christmas... I never really feel like I belong anywhere... I feel like I'm always invading in on someone else's life when it comes to the holidays because EVERYONE has their own traditions already and I didn't get a chance to have that.

Now our tree is bare because he said if it means that much to me he will donate the ornaments somewhere. Of course that makes me feel like a terrible person because Christmas means so much to him. But how do you make it fair for the NEW girlfriend, and the NEW relationship when you're holding onto memories and things that you shared with someone else? And then try to balance his great memories for his amazing Christmas' that he's had? Jim's always been crazy about Christmas. He comes from an amazing family. He comes from Love, from people who love him, people who never put him down, people who are proud of him, people who tell him that they love him, people that try to stay close and make it a point to see each other for annual family outings, he comes from Love.

I don't know what that's like so it's hard for me to really accept emotions. Brick walls are all I see. My family is my friends but even then sometimes I don't feel like I truly belong. Never feel good enough. I'm awkward with people, I always have been. The good ones always seem to surprise me though :)