my christmas tree still sits in the living room and I (the girl who can find symbolism in almost any househld object it seems) think it is quite the symbol for the way my family works.

We didn't pu up our tree until af ew days before christmas. It wasnt the plan of course, not by any means. Mom even swore that this eyar it would go up right afte rThanksgiving like it was supposed to. The key word being "suppossed to". Needless to say the tree didn't go up when we said ti would and there were several attempts to get it up within considerable time before christmas . .. but we didnt. the tree was up about 2 days before christmas and the presents werent wrappe duntil Christmas Eve. true procrastination at work there.

Now the tree is still up, we said we sould take it down on New YEar's but we didnt, we have talked several times about taking it down,even gone so far as to remove all the ornaments, but the tree stils tands.

As with everyhting my family refuses to accept, though they claim they want to, and they refuse to elt go of the past, though they claim they want to.

There was one eyar that my family was not going to put up a tree for Christmas: i nearly died. I cried and bawled and sputtered and wailed until i finalyl put up the old ratty falling apart fake treethat we intended to replace during the after christmas sales. I put it up by msyelf wailing all the while.

I thought the world would end if there was no tree. If there wanst some symbol to haunt us of the past year so that we could eventually stow it away like so many years in our family. I was afraid that if that tree didn't go up then my family would never find a way to rid themselves of all the anger and pain of hte past year.

But non eof htat wasi n my mind at the time, all I knew was that something waswrong wiht not putting up, and so i took it into my own crying and blubbering hands.

I can only imagine how pitiful I must have looked, holding together the only thing that kept my fmaily running and that did a bad job at that.

for somer eaosn I am desperate to hold it together when at the same tim eI depserate to get away form it