A MERRY MAFIA CHRISTMAS (GxG)

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My Christmas List: December 1st
Please please please let me pull off this interior design project.

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Christmas in Chicago...

It sounds incredibly cliché and most people want to experience what the holidays are like in a big city. The enormous Christmas tree placed downtown, the Christmas lights strung up everywhere, Christmas-themed events, Christmas-inspired drinks and food dishes.

How many times did I just say Christmas?

I guess even I'm starting to feel the sudden joy you feel deep in your chest due to the approaching holiday. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Christmas. It's just hard when you have a distant family and a job that gets crazy busy due to it.

Working for an interior design company is probably the last thing on anyone's dream job list if you want some sort of relaxation for the holidays. Or any holiday to be exact. I love that the company I work for is admired and loved, but it only makes my clientele list that much longer.

And I don't mean to float my own boat... but I'm the top producing designer at the company, which impressively didn't take me long to accomplish. I mean, I'm only twenty-four and I'm making way over six figures a year. That's a substantial accomplishment, especially since it costs me my time. A lot of time to be exact.

I don't even remember the last time I was in my beautiful penthouse for over ten hours. And yes that's including sleep.

I already know my Christmas will tragically be spent at my family's large estate as usual. I'll stressfully be trying to design an upcoming project on my iPad while my parents fawn over my older sister and her impressive lawyer career.

I love my sister. I do. It's not me I'm worried about.

It's her.

She's not exactly... that nice to me? I guess you might think she's nice, but in a backhanded way. She always tries to one-up me and whenever she can't she always finds a flaw within whatever I've accomplished.

Last Christmas I got promoted, and her response was Oh? great for you, I'm sure you could use the extra money.

The Christmas before that I secured the dream job that I've been at ever since I graduated college, but here comes my sister, making partner at her law firm, and to add to the blow, she also had to degrade my job. Saying, and I quote, I didn't realize they paid people for that—hell I even thought you were joking about making that a career after college.

I'm past being used to it, but I've grown to be a little less chipper about the holidays. My sister didn't always use to be like this... it sort of just happened. Right when I hit high school actually.

She was going into her junior year since we're technically two years apart, while I was starting my freshman year. I noticed the dynamic shift the night before, her picking apart any outfit I chose. I felt completely insecure and drained of any self-confidence walking into school the next morning.

However, my confidence managed to get zapped back into me, when my sister's friends thought I was pretty and they even went as far as to invite me to their table for lunch. I thought my sister would be proud or happy... maybe even treat me better than she had the night before.

But no.

She humiliated me in front of them all, picking out all of my insecurities with the most backhanded approach. They liked my makeup? My sister would correct my eyeliner for being crooked. They thought my outfit was cute? My sister made sure to point out that she picked it out, taking their praise. I managed to be pushed into silence, scared to make a move or say the wrong thing, knowing my sister was waiting to feed me to the wolves.