How are you enjoying your Black Christmas?

Away for less than 3 days and she's itching for a fight.

My mother asked me what I wanted to do this Christmas. To avoid the major disaster that last Christmas was (read on), I told her to keep it simple this year. Just order pizza for the kiddos, cook some yong tau foo for the oldies, and organise a small barbeque at the balcony (no-brainer stuff like german sausages, no need to season). I was actually quite enthusiastic about it, I actually thought about it last month.

Never did I realise that the question she posed was just a bait for me to bite into so that she could criticize me and ridicule me and humiliate me and remind me of the terrible Christmas I had last year. Even before I could finish describing the barbeque, her face transformed into an ugly mask of smugness and superiority. She then launched into a speech of how I planned everything last year and ended up with a black face just because no one did it the way I wanted it to be. She said she didn't want a repeat of last year, and what a downer it was for everyone, and that I should have just saved up all that time. In other words, she didn't want to lose face.

Having to dig into this part of my memory pains me, but I just have to vent it all out here. I tried explaining how she misunderstood my behaviour last year but all I got was dismissal with the turning of her back. I can't fucking well scream at her, can I? Okay here was what happened last year :

I had planned an intimate sit down dinner for 10, of which I could very well handle. I've cooked for a full house at Saffron, haven't I? Heaven knows how I researched online about what foods to have, because I have to consider my traditional grandparents. And yet, I want them to have something different - something Christmasy and something I prepared personally. So I started the day early, chopping and slicing and seasoning. By early evening, I expected my close relatives to have all settled down so that I could start the first course.

Not only did most of them not arrive on time, many who turned up were not on my list. My mother had gone ahead and invited relatives that we weren't even close to, saying that she met them while marketing in the morning and it would be embarassing if she didn't invite them. It was ok, you see, except that she didn't see the need to inform me - the one doing the cooking. So I had to improvise. It became a buffet, which means I now have to prepare all 8 dishes AT THE SAME TIME. At this point, there were about 20 people outside in the living room, and 1 fucking pissed person inside the kitchen. No one thought to help me, maybe because they didn't know what they had to do. But the point was, no one asked. And so I slogged on.

Soon, hot, delicious and wonderful smelling dishes appeared miraculously on the table. So they started eating, while I sat in the kitchen and cried. No one thought to come and ask me to go eat, maybe because they thought I wasn't hungry. But the point was, no one asked. And so I cried on. When finally my stomach was full with tears, and my heart filled with rage, I took a plastic container, went outside, and emptied the leftovers into it. So this was when people realised I was alive, and that I had a real bad mood going on. So that was what they asked about. "Why her face so black?" "What's all that temper about?"

I had a shower, mixed with tears, then ran out of the house to meet J, and 2 friends who were waiting with open arms for me to join them in their make-shift barbeque at East Coast. I've never felt so useless, so unappreciated and so unloved in my life. That was how I spent Christmas last year.

Sorry this had to be long. I'm saying all this because I need your pity, because my mother is being a bitch, because I'm crying like a slut but no one sees this. They just think I'm a spoilt brat with terrible tantrums. All because no one bothered to ask.

And she had to bring this up again to trigger off all this emotions. She wins again. Fuck her.

Fuck her Fuck her Fuck her Fuck her Fuck her.