This time of year has always been hard for me. When I was little, money was always tight, but that's not why I learned to hate the Holidays.

 My mother was always feuding with someone all my life. She hated her own parents because they made her childhood hard on her. As I grew older I looked more and more like my grandmother and with each passing year my mother tried to smother my sense of independence by down grading me at every opportunity. I was to pay for my grandmother's sins. It really got bad when my mother found her religion.

 Today I have no relationship with this woman. She's bitter and abusive. She calls me names and tells lies to anyone who will listen. All my other family members like aunts and uncles (I'm an only child) are around her all the time and they believe her because they don't know me, so I have no family and no sense of family.

 I hate the Holidays because it's a time of family and we end up spending it alone. Mike's family live in California and Michigan and the only contact we have is through the occasional email or card. My kids live in Texas and have lives of their own and I communicate with them through phone calls and email. Mike's kids are closer, but his ex wife has them convinced that he's a bad person for leaving her fridgid ass and they spend most holidays with her and her family. His daughter comes to visit when she wants to be close to Savannah and go out. His son hasn't been to visit in years. Cindy's lies have turned him against his Dad and I think she's more or less on the same bitter thread as my mother.

 I am grateful to have Mike in my life. He has made life much sweeter for me. Before we met, I was headed for the same cold bitterness of my mother and probably her mother as well. Those things tend to trickle down the line. I would rather die than to be like my mother and all my life I have fought with everything I have to break the cycle of hate that seems to be imbedded in my genes.

 There are times I long for a relationship with my parents.,,, but the price of that would be no less than my soul. She would tear my heart down until I was nothing but a shell of the person I have worked so hard to become. She hides behind God and tears at the very foundation of what He created in me. She uses Him to justify everything she says and does. Religion is useless without love and compassion.