My mother had taken me aside, after the dismembered scraps of quail had been sucked into my oblivion, and the dregs of the dinner wine sat knowingly in my glass, glimmering up at me, as we sat at the table, my brothers two oldest children fighting with one another, the youngest screaming, her mother, my brothers wife, sitting in repose at the end of the table, arm draped across her breast, holding the glass by the stem and gazing over it's rim at me, she whispered at me, while not looking at me, i in Prada, but topped off with a novelty paper hat from one of the hideous, yet expensive, crackers my brother had somebody buy for him, and said to me "i blame myself, i never loved you as a child". This would be a revelation, did i not already know it intrinsically, and it would have hurt were it not for the fact i'd been on seroxat for a while and couldn't care less about anything. and valium too, i had taken some valium, valiantly trying to get through dinner on one glass of wine, "i never loved you" she says again and turns to me, to face me, her small moon face, her downy skin covered in makeup, expertly applied, her mask; "that makes me an appalling mother, doesn't it?" she asks and her tremulous hand tips ever move wine down her face and onto the white table cloth, already a butchers floor of stains and incipient senility. She says it matter of factly, no, more than that, as if she was in some way proud of it. distanced from her own child, rarefied. "i didn't love your father either," she futher imparts.

This year, i am definitely killing myself.