New Years Eve is always extremely depressing for me. I don't know why. I'm not one that goes out and parties for the night (New Years Eve is for amateurs) and I usually stay in bed hoping to fall asleep before the ball drops. I don't like reminiscing on the past year and accomplishments I failed to achieve and looking forward to the next year depresses the hell out of me. Not to mention my girlfriends are always trying to make sure they have dates so they can have some random hook up at a commercialized party where people get excessively drunk and act inappropriate, only to brag about it the next day. No thank you. I'll rent a movie, order a pizza, and camp out in bed.
My birthday. Not because of the age factor, but I'm reminded every year about how my parents thought of it as another day and didn't even wish me a happy birthday for years because I was a "problem child." When I asked my mother years later why she never acknowledged my birthday from ages 13-19, she said "Did you really expect anything from us after the way you acted?" Nothing like remembering conditional love every July 25. Also not a fan of 9/11 either. Especially since I live in WA and out here it's much more of "the government brought down the towers in controlled demolition!" Have a little respect you fucking assholes.
May 9. One of my friends took her own life that day, 2000. I was in the cemetary where she was laid to rest in last week for another funeral, swung by and dropped off flowers. September 11. Those new photos that were released by ABC today hit me like a punch. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/slideshow?id=9763032
I can't handle Thanksgiving anymore. Thanksgiving of many years ago was the day it was announced that my little brother was brain-dead as a result of an operation gone badly, and would be taken off life support. My parents were at the hospital with him, leaving me and my other three siblings at home with grandma Keating. I was absolutely miserable, of course. As were my siblings. Our parents were a hundred miles away at the supposedly better hospital in our state. Grandma Keating, in a display of that ancient Irish stubbornness and peculiar optimism, took it upon herself to prepare a Thanksgiving feast the likes of which I have never seen, before or since. For herself and three children, she roasted an unreasonably large turkey, made a huge pot of potatoes and gravy, all sorts of vegetables and stuffing and whatever, and two large pies. All while playing Elvis music and watching Riverdance on VHS when she wasn't scrambling around the kitchen. I guess she figured by adhering to tradition she could keep a little balance in our lives. I remember her as the only example of strength and kindness in that entire despicable time. This year, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, my grandma Keating died of a sudden heart attack. On Thanksgiving, I worked a double shift on purpose to avoid my relatives. Honestly I wish I could enjoy that holiday. There are dozens of other family bullshit reasons I don't, but I've hit on the core of the issue and I don't really feel like elaborating much more.
The thing about that day is that I wasn't "sad" when it happened, at least not like when I've had to bury relatives or something. I was a lot of things. Angry. Shocked. Frightened. Really, really frightened, not least because it seemed like there was no one in control of the situation. Kids crying in the hallway, teachers crying in the hallway, people on the phone trying to find parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, some of whom never answered. Things were too chaotic and confusing for me to be overtly sad. A day or so after, sadness did set in, and it stuck around for months. But when I think about that specific 24-hour period, I recall a whole lot of other emotions first. That's just me.
Seeing as I was all of 8 years old on 9/11, with no direct family involved, I seem to feel no connection with the events except as an excuse for the government to destroy many of our fundamental American rights to privacy in the name of national security (and this is only because of how incompetent and invasive these laws and their perpetrators have been shown to be.) The saddest day of MY year is whatever the day before school starts is.
For all of the reasons previously mentioned and then some. It seems as if my life, and that of many of my friends, has been in a long slow decline that dates back to around that time. That day kicked off 9 years of general paranoia, war, economic turmoil, the death of some dearly loved people, the declining health of many I am close to, unemployment of friends and relatives, and watching my job slowly circle the drain. Ten years ago, who the fuck would have thought that I'd be nostalgic for August of 2001?