Ooh, lovely lady you reminded me of an important chunk of this essay that I missed out: the practical, physical issue of me receiving gifts.
Edited to add two new relevant paragraphs:
Some of it is more practical: After almost a decade of short-term living situations and an entire year of living out of backpack, the idea of acquiring more Stuff gives me an almost-physical pain. I can't help imagining carrying the extra weight of this new item, whatever it is, or doing the calculation in my head, working out which thing in my already full to capacity backpack I will have to give away, destroy, or otherwise leave behind in order to accommodate this new uninvited guest, however small.
Yes, I have a house right now, but my intention is to sell up and go back to being nomadic in the future. Every gift I receive now will have to be either carried or disposed of in the intervening time, and it hurts my heart to receive beautiful things knowing I can't keep them.
--I do have partners for whom gift-giving is an expression of love. It actually is for me too, I love giving gifts, but since my backpack days my partners have all had to learn that, if they're not happy to simply doing something nice with each other, or making the world a better place in some way, gifts of Stuff must be carefully negotiated*, and either useful or consumable, and these things are usually better dealt with in person than by mail.
It's a year-round issue for me, it's just that christmas has the double whammy of also being a religious festival I don't celebrate, which is strongly tied in with gift-giving and peer pressure.
*Last year, while I was still living out of my backpack, my mum, bless her, bought me a wall calendar. While I had no walls. And was somehow surprised that I was impolite enough to explain to her that I had in fact regifted this to a friend who had a permanent place to live. Because y'know... walls? All of my partners and friends now know this story as a cautionary tale.
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Date: 2014-12-23 04:31 pm (UTC)Edited to add two new relevant paragraphs:
Some of it is more practical: After almost a decade of short-term living situations and an entire year of living out of backpack, the idea of acquiring more Stuff gives me an almost-physical pain. I can't help imagining carrying the extra weight of this new item, whatever it is, or doing the calculation in my head, working out which thing in my already full to capacity backpack I will have to give away, destroy, or otherwise leave behind in order to accommodate this new uninvited guest, however small.
Yes, I have a house right now, but my intention is to sell up and go back to being nomadic in the future. Every gift I receive now will have to be either carried or disposed of in the intervening time, and it hurts my heart to receive beautiful things knowing I can't keep them.
--I do have partners for whom gift-giving is an expression of love. It actually is for me too, I love giving gifts, but since my backpack days my partners have all had to learn that, if they're not happy to simply doing something nice with each other, or making the world a better place in some way, gifts of Stuff must be carefully negotiated*, and either useful or consumable, and these things are usually better dealt with in person than by mail.
It's a year-round issue for me, it's just that christmas has the double whammy of also being a religious festival I don't celebrate, which is strongly tied in with gift-giving and peer pressure.
*Last year, while I was still living out of my backpack, my mum, bless her, bought me a wall calendar. While I had no walls. And was somehow surprised that I was impolite enough to explain to her that I had in fact regifted this to a friend who had a permanent place to live. Because y'know... walls? All of my partners and friends now know this story as a cautionary tale.