Today is officially the worst day of the year, the day the sisters get together for the dinner of horrors at Martha’s house. Since morning I’ve been trying to make up excuses not to go, but by the end I know I’ll give in with my soft heart and end up showing up. They are jealous of me because I’m a successful woman, but I can’t do anything about it. I can’t apologize for what I’ve achieved throughout my life and it wasn’t an easy path: every inch of it I had to earn with strength, determination and will. I am not a woman like the ones who walk around, climbing horizontally in companies or because they have a pretty face they see everything as easy. I have always made it a point to prove my worth in all the places I have been, without fear of the macho society we live in. And what have my sisters done for the contribution of a better world: recycled their diapers? This is why I feel sorry for them, their empty and meaningless life. Yet they think they are better than me, they make unreasonable comparisons, they try at all costs to make me one more in the herd. 

 I could never let my poor Peter go to dinner with me, he who is an angel and idolizes me. He’d get a bad idea after meeting the family. I know my sisters would go out of their way to put him in discomfort, with their judgmental eyes on him and waiting for the rope to stretch until it breaks. So I told him I was going to bed early today, a small lie that hurts no one. My sisters’ jealousy started a long time ago, when my parents were still alive. I am the youngest, so I had special treatment and extra attention, which made them both angry and led to a trauma that still lasts to this day. My mother would buy me new clothes and decorate me with bow ties to make me look like a doll, like in the pictures I still keep to this day. My father would sit me on his knee and tell me stories all night, until it was time for bed and the three of us would go in a row. This all led to a feeling of revenge that has survived the years, and is now manifested in their obligation to treat me badly. Nothing to do, today I am sitting at a table full of strangers whom I call family. 

After spending such a peaceful Christmas with Peter and a memorable New Year’s Eve with a great group of friends, here comes the day of my purgatory, when I have to look into my sins, whatever they may be. I don’t know if I deserve it, I have never hurt anyone. Maybe it all goes quickly, without realizing it. Maybe they’ll take a day off from judging and belittling me. Maybe I won’t have to defend myself as usual. If not it’s because the gods are going to put me to the test once again. And I will be prepared. If I can face meetings with executives who want to rip my skin off, I am also capable of spending a few hours with two unbearable creatures and their annoying families. I will just need to breathe, like in the meditation classes I took a few years ago, and the rest will flow naturally. Tomorrow it will all be over. I will get up and go to work at a job that makes me happy, while they will go on with their little lives, in their ordinary, sad little affairs.

Next Chapter: Martha - January 8th evening