My Holiday Wish for Them...

I didn’t get invited to my mom’s and grandma’s for Thanksgiving this year, but I think that is a good thing. I’m actually relieved that I didn’t get an invite because I would’ve had to come up with some excuse on why I couldn’t be there. I don’t have the nerve to say, “I’m sorry I won’t be there because you both are crazy and you don’t love me, so why should I bother to come?”. That sounds pretty harsh to me even so of course it isn’t anything I would ever say to them. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever spend another holiday with them. Right now I have no desire to. Well that’s not totally true. If things were different I would love to spend the holidays with them, but wishing that doesn’t make it true. Since things are they way they are right now, it’s on that basis that I don’t want to spend any holidays with them. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person. I know I have my own fair share of faults in the current situation. I have asked for forgiveness against some of these unknown offensives however, forgiveness hasn’t been granted to me. I’m sure I still do wrong to this day, actually I know I do. Just the other day at Ciara’s Thanksgiving Day breakfast, I never even went over to say hi. I just waved and went on my way cooking and serving the kids and parents. I did feel somewhat (I stress that somewhat) bad afterwards, because they made no attempt to come to me. I know I shouldn’t be that way, but there are times I just can’t help it. I wrote something to them a few Christmas’s ago and I’ll past it at the bottom of this just to show the depths of my real feelings about them. I do love them dearly! I truly miss them! But I don’t miss the drama that they bring. I don’t miss feeling awful because of the guilt they lay at my feet. It’s hard to explain how you can love someone so much yet not want to be around them at all. I have yet to understand it myself. I know I don’t miss the way they make me feel and I don’t miss the gut wrenching cries that always come afterwards. I miss what could be, but isn’t. I still have this fairy tale in my head that I have a family that loves me unconditionally, but it isn’t fact. In many ways I feel like an orphan, left alone in this world. It is why I rely on God so much and the family He has provided me with my church family. They do accept me as I am faults and all. They so me the meaning of unconditional love here on earth that I had yet to experience before God brought me to them. I consider it my great blessing to have them in my life. Below is what I wrote to my mom and grandma, but of course I never gave it to them. There is much I have wrote to them, things that weight heavy on my heart, but I fear they won’t be able to hear it the way I mean it. They are always reading something else in to it that just isn’t there. Of course, maybe I do this to, I’m just not sure. I just don’t want to make myself seem blameless in this situation when I know I’m not. Yes I do feel like I’ve done all I can do in the current situation and until they decide to forgive my hands are tied. But when I am around them I need to do a better job in loving them in a godly way. Anyway I wrote this little blurb right around Christmas a few years ago when I really was missing all that I thought we could have. I have since moved on to accepting the situation and just praying that God will do a great miracle in our relationship or lack thereof.

My Holiday Wish for You
Melissa Fitzwilliam
The holidays are here again, yet even with history as it is, this year will prove to be the same and different. While all the other holidays I knew I wasn't want there, for I'm just a reminder of all the hurt your heart holds on to. But this year I won't be there, no visual reminders will be before you, just an empty space to serve as proof that I won't be there. As much as all the past years have hurt me in their own way, this year promises new hurts that I have no desire to feel. I try not to feel responsible for the rending of a once happy family, yet in this family that has been my place, it has been what has defined me. Yet as I've grown up telling myself that it is all my fault, I am becoming more aware that our family was broken before my supposed destructing blow. So this year you can be free, you don't have to feel the sting of me. No instead there will be an absence of all that is wrong, all that has destroyed this family of ours. But my holidays will be different from yours, because while I won't feel the pressure that has filled my holidays for so long, they will be marked with an emptiness that I would give anything to fill. I'm beginning to understand I can't mend a brokenness that I did not cause, but that is no comfort for an unrequited love. Simply put, I love you and none of your words or actions to push me away can change that. Maybe that's what makes us so different. While my presence reminds you of hurts, your presence reminds me that as long as I believe that God still works miracles there is still hope for us. They all say it is the season for miracles and how I've waited for one for so long now. A restoration of all that is broken, a healing for all the hurt, I have a feeling the one thing that will accompany my holidays this year, as in the years past, is the tears that have come for so long now. I will fix my part of dinner that won't be shared with you, I will sit in my place with my head bowed in prayer of thanks, yet with that prayer is a prayer for you, for a miracle. I will decorate the tree with ornaments, lights, and tinsel, and listen to the songs meant to fill the heart with joy. Yet even in those moments I will look back to the years when we laughed and shared those precious moments together. I will wrap presents, write cards, and share laughs and love with others, yet there will be the thought that this year you won't be a part of that; bittersweet in so many ways. So this holiday season I will be praying for you, sending you wishes of joy, happiness, and love from afar. I will look to the sky above knowing that we share the same starry nights, the colder air with breaths that we see, and while those are small I can only hope that just maybe as you look above, you are thinking of me like I am thinking of you. If I was given the chance to express myself to you this year, I would want you to know that no matter what I still love you, I still long for us to come together with smiles and hearts overflowing with love and joy. If I were given a chance to ask Santa for one last thing, it would be a reunion for you and me. While you will probably never know these holidays' wishes of mine, they are there. So happy holidays, I wish I could wrap up my love and send it to you, but instead I will pray God will show all that I wish I could but can't.

I do love them! Please never misunderstand that! I’ve just come to accept the situation as it is. It doesn’t make it better, just easier to handle. Sometimes we just have to stop questioning God and accept where He has us. That is where I am. I can either fight Him or bow my knee and rely on Him to handle the situation. So that’s what I do, humble myself to His plan for my life. I pray I can be better to them in the future, but I won’t expect anything in return because I would just be setting myself up for another fall. God’s will is perfect and that is what I know. So all I have and don’t have is in His perfect hands.

Melissa Fitzwilliam