I know that I have friends who are totally into zombies. I know that I even have friends & acquaintances who make their living off of things like haunted houses, scary shit, spooky… you know… this modernized ‘Halloween’.
So friends, just as I support you and do my very best to never be disrespectful, please allow me to vent.
I fucking HATE Halloween.
I just scraped the surface a few weeks ago. With the constant anxiety that Sam has been under (which exists pretty much all of his waking hours) I am just absolutely done with the scary, outlandish, creepy, over-the-top, made of toxic material crap that sits in people’s front yards.
Nevermind the costumes that are about to roll out this weekend. I’m gonna go out on a limb and take a guess at what I am going to see at the bar:
- Women dressed in something slutty
- Men dressed like slutty women
- Zombie men and women
- Zombie women dressed slutty
- Zombie men trying to eat slutty zombie women
- If I see an Angry Birds costume I will have to refrain from punching the bird.
Okay, this seems a little aggressive. It would seem like I am just an angry man who wants to go out and punch stuff, or people. This is not the case. Thankfully, I am a whole lotta words and very little action when it comes to aggressive ranting.
It’s gonna happen, this Halloween thing. I cannot stop it. I cannot make anyone try to resurrect an Autumnal celebration that seems to have now been declared dead and exists only in a bygone era.
So with this rant, and this deep loathing for what this ‘holiday’ has become, I declare it DEAD to me. I know that sounds kind of funny.
So, let me share what these last few weeks have held in store for us.
Sam has a knack for remembering his whereabouts when we go driving. He has now become familiarized with where the most scary homes are. He begins to panic before we even pass the house. He shakes, he cries, he sounds terrified.
In this video clip, I have pulled over the car. Sam was hysterical after seeing a house that had very graphic/gory/horrifying decorations.
A recent class that Jen and I were able to attend together helped put me on track for trying new angles in helping Sam cope and to help redirect him when he is stuck on something, or an emotion, or something that has happened to derail him.
I really had taken a lot of the things they were discussing in this workshop to heart and allowed it to influence the way I did things this past weekend. It seems to be a great thing so far. It’s really hard to maintain calm all the time, but it has to be something that both Jen and I commit to 100% of the time.
In this clip, we’re still on the side of the road and both Zoe and I work to redirect Sam’s fear. “Hockee” is Sam’s way of pronouncing Halloween.
As I drove off, we passed another home (this one is new because they JUST added decorations). This of course sent Sam back into his super anxious/terrified mode. These clips are, for me, even harder to watch when I’m not in the moment. I feel so much empathy for him and can only imagine how awful it must be to be so terrified and to not be able to communicate this with people (let alone your parents).
So, to help Sam cope with the next week, Jen and I are going to get Sam some sleeping masks that we can have in both cars. If he feels like there is something scary he does not want to see, he can cover his eyes.
We’ll see how that goes.
As far as Halloween is concerned, we’re not going to be having candy at our house. Zoe will be able to go out with her friends and experience trick or treating with them, Jen will likely be with her.
Sam & I will have a quiet evening and he will go to sleep somewhere around 7 – 7:30pm