I hate Halloween. I hate everything about it.  I hate wearing costumes.  I hate the weird scarecrow things on people’s lawns.  I think skeleton heads are ugly.  I can’t stand girls who use Halloween as a reason to dress slutty, or dudes who get falling down drunk just because it’s a holiday.  “You don’t like Halloween?” people ask me in hushed, shocked voices.  It’s the same incredulous voice they use when I mention other things I don’t like. “You don’t like football? Or shopping? And you won’t dance at weddings? What’s wrong with you?”

I like looking at other people in costumes, don’t get me wrong. Some of them are very creative. And I love to see little kiddies in their get-ups…what could be cuter?  Maybe dogs in outfits…a new-found love I’ve developed since adopting a small dog. But me and costumes? I just won’t wear one…not unless I’m forced.  Why, you ask? Well, it’s a sad story.

As most of you know, I grew up in London.  We didn’t have Halloween, we had Guy Fawkes day.  Every November 5, we got to build big bonfires, burn effigies of a long-gone saboteur and set off fireworks. My sister and I loved it, but tales of a magical American holiday that involved people handing out free candy made us decide to try Halloween one year.

My sister dressed as a ghost and I made a wacky wizard costume out of an orange beard, my dad’s dashiki and some black construction paper. We went door to door trying to explain what Halloween was.  We found ourselves having to convince our neighbors that we weren’t crazy poor people begging for food, rather we were misplaced American kids trying to introduce a new custom to England.  Upon our arrival home, we dumped out our bags only to find a lovely selection of apples, cans of soup and half-eaten packages of biscuits.  Halloween died a quick and painful death for us that day.

My next bad costume experience was with a toga, worn for my role as narrator in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. As I walked out on stage to deliver my three lines, I heard a horrendous ripping sound.  My Grecian gown was completely open to the entire crew of stagehands…I had to make my exit walking backwards so the audience wouldn’t see my personal little show.

It only got worse from there.  I endured years and years worth of itchy wigs, ungainly objects strapped to my body, horrible silhouettes…all in the name of this strange holiday. What makes me the most resentful, to this day, is the notion that you HAVE to do something simply because it’s a certain day of the year.  It’s Christmas so you must feel jolly and buy lots of crap for people who couldn’t care less.  It’s Valentine’s Day so you’d better have someone to love or everything will remind you of how alone you are.  It’s St. Paddy’s Day so you’re required to drink yourself blind.  I’m telling you, I won’t wear a costume just because it’s Halloween…you can’t make me.

Halloween night I’m invited to a party.  I have to decide.  Either I come up with an outfit that’s not too heinous OR I have to hide in my house from all the kids.  I live in the world’s most suburban neighborhood and there are tons of kids on my street.  They love Halloween, damn them, and every year they make the rounds, knocking on all the doors.

In years past I had a vicious dog who liked to eat children, so I’d hide and pretend no one was home.  But this year could be different.  Walter is a wonderful, sweet dog who loves children, and he looks darn cute in his skunk outfit. I could actually open the door and give out what I never got as a kid…candy! I could heal old wounds.  I could embrace the Halloween spirit.  I could change my destiny.

Then again, that requires having tons of bite-sized Mounds, Snickers and Three Musketeers in the house.  What happens to the left-overs, after all the kids are gone?  Who eats all of that?  Me, of course.  My candy deprivation as a kid has left me with an extreme love of anything caramel, nougat and coconut.  It’s awful, the choices I’m left with?  Wear some ratty-ass costume and get out of my house, or stay at home and stuff my face.  What’s a girl to do? See why I hate Halloween?  Argh…

“Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. ” -  Sigmund Freud.

I am in therapy.  I’m sure there are many of you out there that just let out a big sigh and said aloud, “I knew it.”  But, I assure you I am not crazy.  I just happen to like being in therapy.  I like how cosmopolitan it makes me sound to be able to say, “my therapist says this, or my therapist says that.”  I like the cozy office with the latte machine.  I like the long path of self-discovery that I have been on, and I like finding out that I am not actually as crazy as others have tried to lead me to believe.  Most of all, I like that even though I have to pay her, a person spends one hour a week listening to me drone on about my life (unlike all of you who have to do it for free).

So, every Tuesday morning for the past seven years I have spent an hour on a comfy sofa crying about my divorce, my parents’ divorce, my OCD, my inability to complete tasks, and how sometimes I prefer chocolate to sex.  My therapist and I delve deep into my head to try and discover what makes Gina tick, or have a tick…I do have a slight facial tick.  We’ve made a lot of progress.

I have spent a great deal of time (and money) trying to figure out my life, and I have found that for the most part I am pretty damned happy with it.  I like where I am, and the people I am spending it with.  I like what I am doing or not doing, and so far I think I am doing a pretty good job.  However, as with all journeys, there are some things about it I don’t like, and although I do take on most of the responsibility for the things I don’t like, I do pin some of the blame on others.

Am I afraid of failure, because someone important in my life always told me I was one?  Am I afraid of commitment because I failed at it once?  Do I run around in circles trying to make everyone like me because I was always the last one picked for dodge ball in elementary school?  Do I think I am not as smart as everyone else because I never finished college?  Do I have trust issues because my dad had a lot of girlfriends?  And, do I have fears about money because my mother was so frugal?  These are the questions that I am still working on.

Last week I sat crying into my tissue over some of life’s milestones.  My daughter Matie* just graduated from high school and my son Mevin* has fallen in love with his first girlfriend.  My babies are almost grown and eighteen years at the job of raising kids is almost over.  I’ve devoted so much of my life to raising these kids, who have turned out pretty terrific, or so they lead me to believe, that I am not sure what to do next.    It’s the whole empty nest thing.  Boo hoo for me, what will I be now?  Blah blah.  Then a thunderbolt went off in my head.  I have spent so much therapy time on deconstructing and reconstructing my childhood to find out about me.  What about them?  Someday, will my children be sitting on a comfy sofa, a steaming latte cradled in their hands, crying over their life?  And, what the hell will they blame on me?

Will my adult children confess that they have commitment issues because once when they were young while traveling down the 101, I was so sick of listening to their bickering over a stuffed Pumba doll, that I threw it out the window?  Will Matie cry into her tissue about how she has a mental artistic block because I wouldn’t let her keep used pizza boxes in her closet when she was 8?  She wanted to build a fort, but the boxes attracted rats.

Will my son, Mevin, have to take one of those 12-step programs to overcome his fear of spiders because I made him watch horror movies and forced him on roller coasters when he was too young, just because I loved them?

Will it cost them thousands of dollars to overcome their fear of abandonment because I lost them at the Rose Bowl flea market for a few hours once when they were 4 and 6?  (They wandered off to find Beanie Babies while I was trying on a vintage dress).

Will Mevin develop a problem with insomnia because when he was eight I passed him off as a “special needs” child in order to ensure he had a seat next to me on the plane?

Will Matie develop her own facial tick, because every time she went out of town I cleaned her room and gave her thrift store wardrobe to a thrift store?

All these many years I have enjoyed my homemade Mother’s Day cards while patting myself on the back for such a job well done, when in truth I have done nothing but give fodder for future therapy sessions for my children.  I may possibly have bankrupted the cap on their insurance plans with the hours they might have to spend in therapy discussing me.  I am finding this all so distressing, that I must draw this essay to a close, as I have to find my therapist’s number.  I have way too much to discuss with her now.