the holidays are so hard. I always miss my parents but the holidays are when i feel the most alone, the most disconnected, and the most dead inside. Halloween, t'giving, and Christmas....
i don't know how to deal with them and i'm recently married and my husband has his whole family alive, excited, living...

together. i know they care, but i feel so stupid with his parents buying me all these presents for christmas b//c they don't want it to look like my husband and his brother have more to open. it's so nice of them but it doesn't erase the elephant in the room.

i can't explain the feeling and i don't know if it's all grief or the depression too. Probably both and the PTSD and more. But this year, i already want to take a walk in my yard and weep....christmas and thanksgiving haven't been the same since my dad died when i was 15 but, for me, they are even worse since my mom's death at 25. I feel like an orphan. I feel like i'm coming apart. And when i think about what i want, what i really need right now, it is them. i don't know how to give that love to myself or how to ask for it from my husband. He tires of hearing how much i miss them in one breath and then talking about the ways they abused me in another. it makes it all the more confusing. buti would take them back right now, i would go through the abuse, just to feel connected, just to know someone gave enough of a %#@&#! about me to bother to hurt me.

i know feelings pass. I won't be able to stand this everyday until Christmas. I just don't know the right thing.