There are rules

There are rules where there don’t need to be rules

“I need to write a rule book for this house,” he said, laughing quietly as if he just made a joke. It wasn’t a joke. There are rules and he knew better than to break them.

He was never going to be punished for breaking any of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of rules that have been imposed on us over a lifetime, but he knew those he loved would incur wrath. It was the way he would be kept in line.

So he followed the rules, even though they only benefited one.

Holidays go like this, but so does every other day of the year. Act this way, don’t say that, why are you embarrassing me, you didn’t do it correctly, you didn’t do enough of it, it’s all about you, nobody ever listens to me, we didn’t get to do that thing, the weekend was too short, you are all against me.

The onslaught is relentless, death to your self-esteem by a thousand micro-cuts, each invisible on its own, bearing scar tissue in the aggregate over time.