The Gift

Today's challenge: The Gift. Write about the Christmas Gift you remember the most. Why? Who was it from? Where were you? What is the significance of it?.

The Christmas gift I remember the most is probably the one I need to forget. To this day it still makes me mad, and it still makes me a little angry with myself for being so thrilled over it.

Technically, it was the day after Christmas because it was so late, but it's going to have to count.

Several years ago, I took a little trip with my then-boyfriend to his hometown on Christmas Day. We BBQ'd over at his sister's house until I finally begged him to take me back to his parents' house because I had a horrible migraine. I'd taken a lot of OTC stuff, but none of it was helping. I'd fallen asleep on his sister's couch for an hour or so, but I still felt bad and just wanted to go to sleep.

We got in the truck and I noticed it was almost 3am! But we weren't headed in the direction of his parents' house. He said he had to show me something.

He took me up to an overlook near a state park in Central Texas, not far from his hometown. It was the middle of the night, freezing cold, and I felt horrible. But he dragged me out there, pulled me out of the truck, and stood me up on a big boulder on the edge of the overlook.

Then he took both of my hands in his and asked me to marry him.

There was no ring, no bending-down-on-one-knee...fuck, he wasn't even SOBER. I knew he was, in all likelihood, still really drunk, but I figured out later (after we were married) that he'd been all coked up, too.

Now, there was a ring. But it was given to me by my great-grandmother for just such an occasion. He hadn't thought it out or planned it out or put any thought into it at all, because that ring was sitting in the same place on that night it had been sitting for months, SIZED AND EVERYTHING, on the bathroom counter next to my jewelry box and he had to practically reach *over* it to get his toothbrush for the trip.

Thank GOD my great-grandmother had died 10 years before his proposal. She would have been very upset at how it all went down. But that's neither here nor there.

After I stopped crying long enough to say yes, he kind of just stood there a second. Then, as an afterthought - an overly-dramatic expression of insincere elation aimed at evoking a certain kind of emotion from me - he screamed at the top of his lungs, "SHE SAID YES," and all the dogs in the valley started barking and we laughed and pretended that everything was right in the world.

I realize now that I was practicing willful suspension of disbelief. I knew that nothing about this proposal was kosher. I just wanted someone to love me that much. I wanted to be important enough to someone so that they would want to marry me. I knew it was all very, very wrong. I just ignored every red flag. It wasn't until I noticed that my friends weren't nearly as excited as I was. Something about the looks on their faces made me realize it wasn't right.

So, of course, we fought, because I had the nerve to ask him if he still wanted to go through with the engagement now that he sobered up. I *may* have asked him if he'd ask me again sober. And that set him off. And, of course, I just backed down and took it.

Looking back, for someone he claimed was such an evil, selfish bitch, I sure did concede a lot.

It's no big surprise, I know, to mention that we planned a wedding for that coming November - almost a year - and were married for a year and a half before I threw his lying, drug-abusing, alcoholic ass out. It took another 4 months for the divorce to go through.

The lesson is that there are some Christmas gifts that need to be returned and some that don't. There are some, such as this one, that never should have been accepted in the first place...