Crazy

To: yikes!izzy

Subject: re: turkey

Dear Isabel,

Well, I guess you win. I’m sorry your Thanksgiving was so horrible. I’m sorry your family finds so many ways to break your heart. I was going to complain about spending Thanksgiving volunteering with my mom at the food bank in Bremerton, but now I feel like a big, fat asshole. It figures. As soon as I have an unpleasant feeling or a little dissatisfaction about something in my life, I’m immediately reminded that those feelings are off-limits to me. I am not entitled to them. They are there for you, for kids in the foster-care system, and for kids starving in Uganda. Not for me with my perfect little family and my perfect little life on this perfect little island. If I try to claim one of those feelings, it’s like I’m stealing from the people who really deserve them. So I just pretend not to feel anything at all, so then I won’t feel like so much of an ungrateful prick.

Does that make any sense? I honestly can’t tell if it does. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t appreciate how lucky I am. Sure, my dad left us a long time ago—but really, who has two parents these days, anyway? I have a mom who loves me and thinks I’m the greatest thing to happen since sliced bread. So why do I feel so weird most of the time? Everyone at school has their little group. Even the people nobody likes seem to tolerate each other enough to sit together at lunch. But I just sort of wander around by myself most of the time. It’d almost be better if I thought no one liked me, if I had some weird tick or social inadequacy that could easily explain my alienation, but it’s not that easy. People talk to me at school and invite me to parties, but something’s missing on the smaller scale. I don’t belong to anybody. I don’t have anyone who is mine.

Blah, blah.

I’m sorry you had a bad Thanksgiving. You should have joined me and had dinner with a bunch of homeless people. See? How can I possibly complain when my mom’s a saint? She’s a child psychologist, for Christ’s sake. She treats Kitsap County foster kids pro bono. I know I shouldn’t be so selfish, but sometimes it seems like her work means more to her than I do. It’s like she’s so busy taking care of everybody else, she has no time to think about me, let alone herself. Maybe life seems easier that way because she doesn’t have to think about what’s missing, or the fact that she’s been single for over a decade. And I just have to watch her doing this, making everybody’s life matter more than her own, and I have all sorts of weird feelings about it. Like in some ways, I’m one of the people she takes care of. But in other ways, I’m always competing with her clients for her attention. All I know how to do is try to keep her from being sad, and sometimes that means trying to be the trophy for all her hard work as a single mom and professional woman, trying to be the perfect and attentive son to affirm her parenting. But sometimes it means just getting out of the way and trying to be invisible, so she doesn’t have to be reminded that I have needs too.

But really, how terrible is all that? I almost wish she was a serial killer so I could feel entitled to some goddamned angst like everyone else.

Ungratefully yours,
Connor