While it may sometimes appear otherwise, I am not very family oriented. I rescue, aid and yes, even baby sit when it is required of me, but really, I am a solitary creature unless around one of the few people I count as friends.

My mother and I haven’t been on the best of terms for a while. Personal reasons, naturally, but I’m tired of her interference in my life - my love life specifically, and have given her the distance as a sort of punishment. I speak to her, but don’t visit. I don’t reveal the details of my day-to-day, or even answer the phone when she does call. She’s now on my schedule, which is exacting and beautifully frustrating.

Thanksgiving saw her frustrated by my lack of response, and she did something she has never done - made plans to go out of town to visit, yes, even more relatives. And with her, she took the rest of the local family.

Two thought process crossed my mind:

1. Thank God, no need to make inane conversation until Christmas.

2. Shit, I might have to cook.

The first was, of course, a relief. I’m not good at small talk with everyone. I need something to work with - something that interests me, and even then, I flounder. I prefer my answers to come from details extracted over a period of time, rather than direct questioning. So no family = good. I already knew what I want to know about them anyway.

Cooking? I can cook. Do cook now on a semi-regular basis. I do not, however, subscribe to traditional Thanksgiving. It is an American holiday and I am American, yes, but wasn’t raised with that sort of nationality and so holidays like Thanksgiving and July 4th tend to be less meaningful for me.

Cooking a large bird and making a nightmare array of dishes to appease the Thanksgiving Gods was not going to happen.

A few days before turkey day, I was out with damn near all of my friends and we concocted the idea we did indulge ourselves in. Blissfully, ‘thank’fully, the place we decided to go was quite underbooked.

Skiing. Eurekia. Would have been great if I stuck to the skis.

Thanksgiving found me, us, on the slopes of Colorado. I like to think of myself as a sporty type of guy. I like to try new things, and even if I don’t like them, I stupidly, have to be good at them. Ice skating is a fine example of this flaw in my personality. I can ice skate well now, but I hate it and getting me out on a slick expanse of ice with tiny blades attached to my shoes — Not going to happen.

Skiing is something I’m good at. So, naturally, the next step, according to one of the men along for the ride (note the subtle note of blame), was snowboarding. I’ll tell you now, any sport where you can’t separate your feet at will, is not good. Snowboarding is death, but covered in the same hot wax they use to coat your board.

I should have just thrown a rock against my skull, stomped on my foot and flung myself off the nearest roof onto a pile of dried evergreen needles and called it a day. I will not be trying that again. The days I spent with that board were painful.

At least, at very least, I don’t have a broken foot.

That happened to the other guy.

Oh, and we had fish that night.

It’s the only hint I’ll give you on how I spent my thanksgiving…

At least until I finish the post.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.”

I doubt there isn’t one of us who hasn’t been blind sided by the simple fact that it is impossible to not fail all of the time, and that juggling, while amusing at times, isn’t an effective coping tool long-term. I’ve just fixed my head, and still, shockingly, don’t have all the answers I needed from the process.

My job is great. It is finally, after all of these years, what I want it to be — it’s what I’ve earned. Fewer hours. Less travel. (At the moment, however, it doesn’t feel that way.) I’ve settled into, what you could call a comfort zone. I don’t have to kill myself to reach my long-term goals.

N and I still aren’t together, I’m sure you’ve gathered that, or knew it somehow. You may have noticed that the category has been retired (which I will have to break to categorize this post), but doing so hasn’t erased her from my mind. She felt, and mentioned several times, that I spent more time in my head thinking about N, than the person behind the initial.

I agree, in part. Memory, even the person N represented, was always available to me in my head. My mind has always been biased, in memory, in her favor — I’ve always forgotten, or given up the anger of the present, the logical reasons for not being with her. It seems as if my mind let go of those faults when I looked back upon her.

Maybe I stayed in there too long.

The possibilities of love are endless. I can love her and not be with her. It’s art that you can’t take home with you. It’s art that you would not remove, even if you could. Because to love her, is, sadly, to let her go.

I’ve just watched one of my dearest friends lose his pregnant wife. I wrote LOSS for him. When he came to stay with me, which I gladly invited, he brought with him the weight of grief and depression. He was made half by this, not because he was incomplete without her, but because somewhere in their marriage, she became his blood, he became her skin.

She embraced him.

Maybe this restlessness that visits me will leave, and I will be calm. Not today however. Not today.

My weekend of debauchery is over. Steam vented. Physical and mental barriers are blown to shit. I’m relaxed, almost lazily smiling as I type this. It’s so good when the sadist purrs like a recently fed cat. I feel almost greedy taking my skin back from him. Greed is equal to satisfaction.

It is a ripe, sweet and succulent fruit, and I’ve devoured it wholly.