They started to argue. They started to argue yet again. This happens at every family dinner, even though we only see each other twice a year. Still, that is not a deterrent for them, quite the opposite.

I used to think that once we all go our separate ways, we will be much kinder to each other, but no – the education of hatred, jealousy and envy that our parents had given us lives on. It’s like my parents live on it, suck it like vital liquid… It’s like they need it to survive.

When John starts verbally abusing Rich and Rich resurrects the past for the hundredth time to express his frustrations with everything John has ever done to him, our parents just sit there smiling, beaming; sometimes they take sides. You can see it on their faces, they love to see us, their kids argue. They love to see us hating each other.

We moved to the four corners of the country, as away from each other as physically possible without crossing the borders. We were like magnets rejecting each other. I thought, “well, we will be friends now, we are adults, we’ll understand and help each other.” Nothing could be further from the truth as I was about to find out time and again.

They started to argue yet again and I felt sick to my stomach seeing the same scene with the same script, with the same actors manifest itself like a symptom to a much bigger undealt-with problem. I felt sick and got up despite my mother’s objection, threw the tissue hanging from my neck on the table, walked into the hallway, got my jacket and went out into the cold winter night. I closed the door behind me and suddenly all that I was left with was the vast darkness and the starry sky of Alaska. I went into the woods and wished to never go back. Wished I were home. Wished I’d never came back for “Christmas”.

I went back only after all the lights were out, when everyone was sleeping. I took my luggage and tried to go home. Ended up sleeping in the car that night, but I had such a peaceful sleep even with the howling wind outside… Away from it all, away from the arguments and the hatred of the family. They are like black holes eating each other, circling one another in a dance of death until one of them gives in.

Sick of it. Sick of “family”.