I do not mean the kind of disagreement where people cool off and apologize and learn something. I mean the kind where you start to realize your nervous system has a Pavlovian response to a certain ringtone. Where you can tell, from the way a text preview lights your screen, whether you are about to be praised, used, or quietly gutted.
The kind where love is a currency and you are always paying in advance. For years, I told myself that was dramatic, that every family had their version of this and that adulthood meant learning to take the good with the bad. I went to therapy, read articles with headlines about boundaries and emotional labor, and underlined sentences about how you cannot change people who are invested in being right.
Then I would go home for the holidays and hand my power over at the door like a coat, because that is what we are trained to do when the people in charge gave us our last name. So when I say Christmas Eve, and my mother clearing her throat like she was about to introduce a governor, I need you to understand that none of this was new. It was just the most concentrated version of a pattern that had been rehearsed since childhood.
If you want the quickest way to understand my family without years of context and a spreadsheet of tiny slits, imagine this exact moment on Christmas Eve when my mother cleared her throat like she was about to introduce a governor. My father stepped forward with that tight little smile he saves for announcements. And my sister Jessica held her wine glass the way a pageant winner holds a bouquet, already glowing with the kind of gratitude that only appears when someone suspects the gift will be enormous.
Meanwhile, I sat there trying to keep my face neutral, because there is only so much dignity you can keep while you wait to learn which role you have been assigned this year. They said it fast, the way people say something they have practiced in the mirror, that they had a surprise for Jessica, a fully paid vacation home that would be perfect for summers and long weekends and whatever else people with endless free time do. And the room erupted, because of course it did, since it is easy to clap when the gift is not yours and the story is simple.
Chairs scraped back. Someone whistled. My uncle thumped my father on the back like he had just won something on the stock market.
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