Brilliant … But Bouncy

We’d Been Raised With Infinite Love.

On Christmas morning in the Moore household, we’d leisurely awake – either blissfully late or brutally early, depending on our ages – and run downstairs to the tree. Like in a Hallmark movie, we’d find dozens of presents in brightly colored paper perfectly placed under the tree – every one carefully matched with the deep desires of its designated recipient. We’d spend the day enjoying the gifts, enjoying each other, feeling the love.

But in 1985, I didn’t live at my parents’ house. I lived in that cold, tiny room with three other people: no tree, no lights, no presents. I’m not sure – because I never asked – what Christmas morning was like for Larry and his four siblings, but 1985 wasn’t like any Christmas I’d ever known before.

My parents – who kindly and thoughtfully invited over both Larry and me for Christmas day – gave us both gifts and fed us better than I’d eaten in months, other than Thanksgiving. We were hopefully grateful and definitely sober for the bulk of the day.

But being with my parents nauseated me – not because they were nauseating, which is what I claimed at the time, but because I couldn’t rectify my aberrant feelings.

My parents represented safety and care, offering me a haven from the cruel outside world. They took care of me for my entire life, provided me with everything I could ever need. My sisters and I always had our issues but we’d been raised with infinite love. My parents were loving and kind and beautiful people, and they taught me to be a loving, kind and beautiful person.

But that’s not who I was under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want someone to care for me – obviously, I’d found Larry to do that job. It was that I believed I wasn’t worthy of their love and kindness. I knew what I was doing when I wasn’t in their home; I knew that my behaviors were absolutely destroying them. The guilt that came from just being near them was staggering.

So I wanted to stay away from them. I wanted to never see them, never remember their kindness, never think about how much I was loved before I left. I wanted to completely ignore their way of life so that I wouldn’t recognize the abyss between their life and mine.

And having Larry in my parents’ home nauseated me most of all. I didn’t feel proud or happy to have him there. He didn’t fit into his role when my parents were around. I felt like I had two fathers and one of them was an enormous fraud. At the time, I didn’t know which one it was; I just knew that something was desperately wrong.

Of course for this, I blamed my parents. They expected so much from me.

So at the end of Christmas with my parents, I thanked God that it was over and I didn’t have to do that again for a whole year. I ran away as fast and as far as I could.

I ran all the way to Pitcairn, where we found one bar open, mostly empty. The only people there seemed to have no one to love them on Christmas day.

I sat with them, both sad and happy to be there, and I drank.