The Ghost of Christmas Past

My mom has written about how hard Christmas is for children who have come out of childhoods filled with abuse and neglect. Hard is one word, haunting is another. Every year on Christmas Day I think about my birth family, if only for a second. When I was younger, the thoughts lasted longer and made me sadder. I wondered if my birth family even threw a thought my way. Did they wonder if I was happy and having a good Christmas? Did they miss me? Were they having a decent Christmas? Sadness over not having my other sibs to spend Christmas with, coupled with what we call "survivor guilt" set in alot. It is hard to enjoy Christmas with such thoughts running through your head, especially when you're only twelve. While most kids reminisce about last Christmas and how much fun they had, the best Christmas memory I could muster up at age twelve was when our foster mom took us to the Christmas party put on by the military base in El Paso, where soldiers handed us toys from the local Toys for Tots drives. Today, I probably go over board with Christmas. I make sure I decorate my whole house, probably in an attempt to somehow "make up" for for all the Christmases that I spent wondering if my birth mother would wake up (she was of course, hung over), much less if we;d get any presents. I remember once she did take us to the local shelter where they were passing out out free Christmas dinners. Come to think of it, it wasn't her that took us, it was her boyfriend. So, yes, Christmas is difficult for children who have pasts like me. It's the Ghost of Christmas Past and no matter how far we try to run from it, it somehow finds us every year.