A Salty Spinster Holiday Special: Surviving Christmas...When You're the Single Gal

So, like many other ladies in the same pool, Christmas with the family is not really something to celebrate so much as something to survive.

Because that's what it is: a one-day or night event surrounded by people you have literally nothing in common with. I call these people family. And once a year, I'm forced to go through an obstacle course of highs and lows. And it's a bloodbath.

To be truthful, I'm sure many of them feel the same way about me--there's no common ground, no common anything, sans the same last name. And we're all probably secretly embarrassed of each other.

That being said, here's my 5-point single gal's perception of Christmas with (a sometimes insufferable) family:

1) YOUR KIDS ARE NOT THAT CUTE.
Sure, they giggle, They squeal. They are tiny. That doesn't mean they aren't tiny monsters. My cousin Regina's kids, for example, have a strange ass fixation. I mean, three Christmases in a row, my ass is grabbed over a hundred times by tiny, sticky hands. Because apparently children are natural molesters. And sticky.

I look to my cousin for assistance; she smiles and shrugs her shoulders at my horror.

"It's good for you to experience this," she says condescendingly. "You're getting older and may never have a family of your own."

Cue the second bottle of wine I open.

2) THE PISS BATTLE
All my cousins are insanely successful. They all have fancy job titles, fancy salaries, and the fact that I'm in my 30s and still living in an apartment is probably adjacent to living in a Third World to them.

But what's even more amazing is how they each try to one-up the other.

"We just had the most breathtaking vacation in Morocco," my cousin Regina purrs (while sipping a Pinot Noir that probably cost more than a week's worth of groceries). "You haven't vacationed until you've experienced Casablanca in person."

"Oh, that's nothing," says my equally well-traveled cousin Lyle. "A week in Tuscany and we never ate so well. We had a full-time maid and butler in our house. It was amazing. Nothing will ever top it."

Do you ever notice that when people are one-upping one another, they smile wider and wider? I think that's symbolic of an angry middle finger of envy and fury. I'll gladly stick to my cable and cocoa for now.

3) THE DRINK POLICE
On average, I'll consume about 2.5 bottles of wine at this hellish holiday event. And about every hour, my pushy aunt will sidle up nearby and mutter (just loud enough for me to hear), "That's my greatest fear--an alcoholic child."

I don't let this get me down. Her Botox-sheened face basically knocks any credibility that she ever had into dust. I just drink on knowing that I'm getting ever closer to that glorious cab ride home.

4) AN ORGANIC VEGAN COOKIE ISN'T JUST AN ORGANIC VEGAN COOKIE
Year after year, one of Regina's daughters will whine incessantly for a cookie before dinner, which her mother and father both vehemently deny her.

"Cookies lead to obesity," Regina lectures.

"Even one cookie?" I ask while popping open the third bottle of wine.

"It starts with a single cookie," she says ominously.

I don't understand this. Regina and her polished hubs both sport glorious spray tans and wrinkle-less foreheads, courtesy of said-Botox. The type of cookie served is an organic, vegan shit-puck anyway. Isn't that basically a vegetable?

PS: I'm pretty sure any cookie is less toxic than Botox...

And 5) MIXING MONEY AND JESUS
A small group of the earlier mentioned cute children will say the Lord's prayer before dinner is served. Respectfully, I even put my wine glass down and bow my head, like everyone else. And for one moment, silence quells all the tension that's been building up for the last half hour (yes, it's only been a half hour).

Then, as soon as that whispered amen is completed, my uncle will launch into his latest money-making scheme. Most of the time, it sounds like a Ponzi scheme, but he's managed to stay out of jail so far. Then his son will talk about his newest job promotion and how busy and rich is he. Why, he's so busy with his success he almost couldn't make it to dinner! Bless him.

Let's cut the shit--talking about money during Christmas dinner is like inviting Herod to your baby's baptism. It's just inappropriate.

Mercifully, the evening will settle down, and we'll all begin our not-so-tearful goodbyes.

I'll hope that next year will be better, but in my heart I know better. Each year, it's a marathon to make it to January--the magical month where my self-esteem returns, along with logical expectations.

Lost order is restored...until Valentine's Day.

Chapter One: The Scorned

My best friend is a former supermodel. No, seriously. Fee (Felicia) was born in Sweden, grew up in Maine, modeled all over Europe, then settled in the Midwest when her modeling jobs started drying up.

Those jobs started drying up when she hit twenty-eight. Now, five years later, she runs a spa and is a single mom to a three-year-old who can't stand me. Her name is Gia.

Gia hides when I show up. She looks at me as if I'm a second away from murdering her. Our other friends have great ways of reaching small children. And in their presence, Gia is fun-loving, free, and adorable. The two times Fee has asked me to babysit, Gia hides under her bed, convinced that I'm Satan.

I'm hoping that by high school I can buy her love with underage drinks and tattoos.

Fee and I bond over our lackluster love lives. Her child is a product of a one-night stand with a gay cabaret dancer after her ten-year relationship ended. And yes, the circumstances are funny now. Fred and Fee are also two of the best parents any kid could ask for.

From my own romantic front, I fell in love with an unattainable man when I was just eighteen. He had a girlfriend. Looking back at it now, there were warning signs everywhere. But I was too young, too naive, and too romantic to see them.

It wasn't a situation like you see in soap operas where the horny teenager tries to break the happy couple apart. It was nothing like that. It was simply me, after observing too many painful couple fights at barbecues (and only seeing HIS suffering), deciding to grab a pen and sheet of stationary and write down all those grandiose feelings of love.

This man was a good decade older than me, but I was never a very good judge with that sort of thing.

And so there was the letter to the one I thought was my soulmate. I used words like "heartquake" and "fever-bliss" (which, regretfully, does sound like a fever blister). It was my own inner Shakespeare, and I was canvassing a future for both of us through words. The catalyst was it was all pouring out of my heart.

That he barely knew my name never entered my mind as an obstacle.

Hey, all of us have been there. All of us. I just don't know that too many of us are dumb enough to put everything on the line -- dignity, respect, decorum, and dreams -- but I did.

And what happened wasn't what you see in the PG-13 movies. What happened was he glanced at my letter, roared with laughter, then through it in the fire pit. My eighteen-year-old heart was shattered. My views of love in what I already knew could be a cold, lonely world were shattered.

Why did it work in the movies? Why did Molly Ringwald get Jake Ryan in the end?

It doesn't happen like that in real life.

And despite the deep scar that encounter left, I went on to college. I grew up a little. I dated someone I began to care about deeply. The problem was he was still pining for his ex-girlfriend. I just didn't want to see it.

Do you remember the definition of insanity? You know -- the whole repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result? ...Let me introduce myself.

He and I came to a crossroads. I asked him to choose. I poured out my heart again.

I lost again.

This isn't a pity party post. It's a realization post. We're indoctrinated at a young age (girls, anyway) to believe in magic, in dreams, in love... But those are stories. And some stories should probably stop being told. I don't mean about the not dreaming, but about risking all for everything. All for that illusion of love.

After all, why was I in a mindset that only a man was worth risking every ounce of who I am? Shouldn't that energy be put into something else?

Fee is convinced I'm the eternal 'scorned' woman. But Fee was always a realist. When little girls are put on this earth and taught to dream, someone ought to also teach them how to save themselves.

After all, "evil queens are the princesses who were never saved."

The Salty Spinster: Prologue

Thirty-three is kind of a ridiculous age. It’s not really old, but you can’t really pass for “kidlike” anymore. When I turned thirty, there was a surge of those familiar questions. What’s my life plan? What’s my baby plan? What’s my ‘label?’ Plans and labels became much more important than jobs and money.

Three years later, the surge has definitely diminished. But something ugly has taken its place. Nobody really asks questions anymore. Instead, I’m compared to various other family members like a piece of rubber shoved into a fragile crack.

There are many cracks in my family.

Cousin Jude has one of those generic four-year college degrees that apparently makes you an expert on everything. I didn’t know that was an option, or maybe I would have rethought that English major.

Cousin Jude, according to my entire family, is a saint. She has a part-time job at her dentist-husband’s office where she files her nails and watches Saved by the Bell reruns all day. She has two kids under ten who always look sick to me. Always.

Last Christmas, when I was drunk enough, I asked Jude why her girls looked so miserable all the time. She said the girls had been exhibiting an unacceptable amount of hyperactivity, so she and her equally saintly husband put them all on a strict no-sugar, no-gluten, vegetarian diet.

“Oh, so they’re starving to death?” I asked in my innocently drunken way.

Cousin Jude’s eyeballs bulged out of their sockets so far that I thought they’d reach out and smack my cheeks. My eyes have never done that. But I also eat meat regularly.

“My girls are perfect!” She shot back, half-snarling. “When they are grown, they won’t struggle with self-control, like some of us.” Her eyes glazed over to the empty wine bottle next to me. I shrugged, but she wasn’t done with me quite yet. “And they’ll be able to sustain a normal, happy relationship and not be so pathetically tragic.”

Tragic.

There was the new word.

  

I was tragic…in her eyes.

When I was in my twenties, I lived off both Bridget Jones movies. In the first one, there’s a particularly uncomfortable scene where Bridget is asked at a dinner party why so many women in their 30s are still single. Her response is horrifically painful: “I suppose it’s because our bodies are covered in scales…” –it’s a scene I couldn’t quite grasp until Cousin Jude’s remarks.

My response to her, though, was not quite Bridget-worthy.

Instead of saying a single word, I got up and left. I walked three miles home. I cried most of the way.

Despite how far we independent women think we’ve come, some remarks go too far. Some words hurt. And while my commentary about her daughters might have been a tad out of line, surely she knows she’s ridiculous? Right? RIGHT?!

I didn’t talk to Jude for several months after that. Not until we ran into each other at the supermarket.

She was behind me in line, and I was plenty happy to keep ignoring her, but one of her girls recognized me.

The cashier ringing up my groceries started talking to the girls. She told them how beautiful they were, how good they were, and how she wished she had had two sweet little girls instead of two little boys.

Cousin Jude was cooing with all the compliments. I was watching the cashier mostly not pay attention to how she was bagging my items. A carton of eggs was placed in one bag. A large bag of apples was placed on top.

“Excuse me,” I say quietly, “could you please put the apples in a different bag?”

The cashier looked at me as if I just pulled a gun on her. “What?”

I point to the bag. “My eggs are getting crushed.”

“Not crushed…maybe just dried up.” Jude chimes in.

The cashier laughs, grabs the bag of apples, places them into another bag, and probably figured I wasn’t bright enough to catch her rolling her eyes at me.

But in a heartbeat, her attention was back on Jude’s girls.

This time, though, I couldn’t quite be silent. This time, I couldn’t quite be as cute or charming as Bridget Jones either.

This time…the spinster came out.

“You are rude!” I belted out at the cashier. The lady stared at me, wide-eyed and surprised.

“Chill out. You’re acting like a psychopath.” Jude’s voice…I could barely process her words… Because why—why?—after listening to insufferable remarks—why was I labeled a psychopath by pointing out one person’s rude behavior?

Normally, I’d wait until I was at least in my car and then cry out all the anger. But something happened. The spinster was out. She was outraged. She was far too pissed for tears.

So she took an egg out of the carton. She held it in front of two little girls and their mother. And she declared: “Eggs are baby chickens who never had a chance at life! Eat it!”

The egg hit the ground. Bright yellow yolk splattered Jude’s shoe. The girls stepped behind their mother cautiously…because throwing a baby chicken egg was surely just a breath away from throwing a child.

Then I fled—I was out the door and running to my car. What I had done…it had to have been a felony. The cops would be after me soon.

After all, what kind of woman throws eggs on the floor in front of two starving children? I mean, seriously. I’m officially the spinster in Steel Magnolias—the Shirley MacLaine character who everyone’s afraid of.

That’s me. Ouiser.

Children cry when they see me. Cashiers call police. Eggs are in witness protection. No one is safe.

Except that for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had a voice again. Even if it was the voice of madness.

It occurs to me that we are not all destined to be those princesses in the castles. The regal, magnificent ones who always look perfect—and always seem to know the perfect answer to every situation.

It occurs to me that we are not all destined to be those damsels in distress either.

Or the ultra-mod feminists who manage to juggle motherhood with their career.

Or the self-sacrificing stay-at-home moms who point the middle finger up every day in favor of beating to their own drum.

No. Not all of us fit into a mold.

Some of us are born to be bad guys. WELCOME TO MY VIRGIN JOURNEY FROM NICE GIRL TO SUPER-VILLAIN...HERE I GO. 

(note to self: make up drug addiction to get out of future family obligations...)