serafaery

eerrrrf, gotta be careful with the essentialism/minimalism stuff. The decluttering channel I found has some nice aspects, but when videos go into great details about "frugal living" that are just my everyday habits, it's a bit of a let-down. "Here's how to save 10,000 per year!" uuhhh, I have done all of those things my entire life, because I've never had an extra ten grand to blow.

Like, I haven't gotten a haircut since 2018 (didn't even enjoy it, really).

There were maybe two professional haircuts I got that I ever liked.

Oh oh, and the "buy 5" rule. Oh! Novel idea! Commit to only buying 5 new pieces of clothing per year!

Ummmm. lol.

I thrift all my clothes, it is very rare I buy new things, I might get 5 per year, sometimes. If you count socks.

I mean, honestly, sure, I could make a spreadsheet and make totally sure to hit this mark, that might be worth trying, maybe I'm wrong and I forgot the purchases.

But still.

It's not going to save me ten grand.

heh.

Anyway. Working through it. I do need to find some decluttering help, but this lady's videos are bait and switch. I might need to find another channel. For example, she posted one that had an intro of, "I finally unbox the few things I saved after cleaning out 30 years of stuff from being an emotional hoarder." And then she talked on and on about how fun it is not to own anything, and never even mentioned or showed anything that she saved.

This is the thing. I have made drastic errors when trying to unload my stuff, and gotten rid of priceless, irreplaceable family heirlooms, not realizing what I was doing, just unloading dead parents' and dead grandparents' and dead other relatives' things in a panic of overwhelm, and I had many many months of sobbing tears and heartbreak over losing those things. (Some of this I realized only recently came from guilt-trips from my brother, who was just as responsible for these losses as I was, but pinned them all on me and never let me forget what I did.)

So, this makes it even harder to go through things with emotionally heavy loads. Any time I start to cry and lose my ability to think clearly, I have to stop. I freeze, panic, and cannot trust myself to make the right choice, in that state. So, nothing gets released.

It's a terrible trap.

SO. I thought it would be really helpful to see what this lady kept. But there was none of that in the video that was literally titled as a reveal of what was kept.

I am also keenly interested in minimalist/essentialist admitting making mistakes, so that it can help me avoid them.

So far I have not found this. Just some general, "photos are small and can be digitized" tips.

What do I do with, for example, the fact that I am the only one who cares about my grandmother's silver set, even though it has some missing pieces, but I am not interested in learning how to polish silver, so it never gets used.

(Part of the reason I want to finish my grandma's book is that within it she expressly states that the purple candlesticks are bequeathed to me, but my brother has the last remaining unbroken one and he will not relinquish it. I don't necessarily want to take it away from him, but I want to not be the only one in the world who knows that it is supposed to be mine and was meant to be passed down to me from my great great grandmother.)

(Part of me feels like part of the reason mom broke one of them was because she didn't want them to go to me, either, but that's a conjecture not worth entertaining, there is no proof of it, just, a feeling I have, that is unfounded. Other than the fact that she often accused me of being selfish and ungrateful, something my brother also does.)

It's part of the reason I love that movie, American Beauty. The mother in that film, at one point, slaps her daughter across the face, and calls her an ungrateful little brat. "Just look at everything you have. When I was growing up we lived in a duplex, we didn't even have our own house!" she screams at her stunned sixteen year old.

THAT. That dissolution of working so hard on appearances that one forgets the whole reason that they are trying to provide for their family. It should be done out of love. And care. And a wish for a better life. Not out of ego. If you hate and resent your child for what you provide to them, something has gone terribly wrong. Wrong in the way things are prioritized financially, and wrong within the heart.

What is the word. Contempt. My mother regularly treated me with contempt. I never knew when this was coming. The person I depended on the most, suddenly turning on me as if I were the enemy. Such a sickening feeling, as a kid, to deal with, on a regular basis.

Kids of course have unkind feelings toward their parents, at times, too. I guess I just thought, at the time, it was only fair for it to go both ways. But I never lost that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, especially after she totally disowned me.

Maybe I deserved it.

I'm not sure how to release all of these regrets, now.

Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve to be alive, while she is not, after everything she went through, to try to give me a better life than she had.

She succeeded. But maybe I don't deserve it.