April 12, 2004 at 12:57 p.m.
Thank goodness easter is over. I hate easter. I tell myself that my reasoning is logical; I'm not a christian, therefore easter is pointless to me. I tell myself that I hate the bastardization that pseudo-christians have imposed on their supposedly most sacred holiday... reducing it to mystical magical bunny rabbits and jelly beans.
I can say all that stuff, and really really try to mean it, but it's not the truth. The truth is really simple... I hate easter because I don't get a stuffed bunny anymore. I'm sure that sounds stupid, but it's a little more involved than that... the stuffed bunny is just a frontispiece for something bigger that really saddens me.
I have a huge stuffed bunny collection. It was never my intention to have shitloads of stuffed bunnies, it was my mothers. As long as I can remember, my mother gave me a bunny (or two) on easter. Since I'm an emotionally hypersensitive girl, raised by an emotionally hypersensitive woman, I formed this huge ridiculous bond with stuffed bunnies. As an adult, I'd go to Megalo*Mart specifically to check on the stuffed bunnies. It'd break my heart to see them all strewn all over the aisles, being stepped on by old people and run over by shopping carts. I'd pick them up off the floor and put them back up on the shelves, and usually take home the most misfit, dirty and pathetic-looking bunny because I felt so badly for it. Yeah, I have issues with ascripting human emotions onto inanimate objects... always have.
So... when I got older, I started picking up a bunny for my mother, and we'd have bunny-exchange on easter morning. It was something I always looked forward to, we never talked about it, it was just always done - a tradition. We'd sit there sniffling and weepy over how cute our new bunnies were while my husband and father and brother looked at us like we needed to be checked in to Harrington.
Well, now she's gone, and it's so very apparent at times like these. Last easter, I tried to cater to the kids and my father and J. by making them cute little easter baskets with cute little bunnies and making a cute breakfast easter morning, like my mother had. I even made my aunt/father's girlfriend a little basket. I guess I'd never considered that nobody would think of me as I had them. It's been a constant theme since the passing of my mother. Both my father and my husband are very aware of the bunny-thing so I was really hurt that nobody thought maybe it'd be a good idea to continue the tradition, just to make me feel good, to help me out on a day that obivously meant a lot to me and would be hard to experience for the first time without Mom. Nah, nobody ever bothers. Ever. I was really hurt last year, and it was then I decided to hate easter and ignore it to the very most possible degree.
And I did this year. I totally fucking did. The terrible part is that I thoroughly enjoyed everyone tromping out to the kitchen on easter morning and finding... nothing. Not a single fucking thing. No cinnamon rolls or colored eggs. No fake grass or jelly beans or chocolate candies. Not a fucking Peep in sight. I enjoyed the looks of disappointment. Isn't that sad? At 23, I'm still getting off on playing "Neener-neener, I got you back, so there" games. As an adult, I still indulge in passive-agressive behavior. Why? What else could I have done?
I know someone's going to comment that I should have spoken up last year about how hurt I was. It's sort of logical, but I couldn't allow myself to do so... first off, because I'm supposed to be a big girl and being sad about the lack of a stuffed bunny is just childish. Secondly, and more importantly, I just think there are some things that one shouldn't have to ask for. Some things that wouldn't feel as good if you had to ask for them. Some things that I don't want to have to ask for, I don't want to have to hint around about. I just want someone to know, to care enough and be concerned enough to just know. It's so simple and so obivous, but yet again, nobody gives a shit.
It's really saddening. I mean, I have a double shot here... both my father and J. know about this, yet neither chose to act. The two people that are closest to me in the world, and supposedly care about me the most. It's so disappointing. I'm so sick of being diappointed. It makes me want to allow myself to rot emotionally, so that I don't give a shit about anyone any more. I'm sick of giving and never getting anything in return, so maybe I should just stop giving. Stop doing those special things that make the people I love happy. I'm sick of taking care of everyone else, making sure they know they're special, while I get to sit here and try to get some kind of attention and validation from the mostly faceless people inside this fucking glow-box. Pretty sad that a married woman should feel this way, huh?
I know this particular issue was a big problem in my relationship with SR, I just didn't know how to appropriately and clearly express myself and hand over my fears; show Him these sore spots and leave them in His care. Instead, I allowed myself to form a resentmet toward Him in advance of all the things I knew I'd be giving Him and all the things I just knew I'd be denied in return... because that's how it's always been. Did that make any sense?
I miss Him terribly, as I always do, but I know He's around. The snow's melted; sure enough, the ground is still there.
