0ldstdrm

On Grief

or, On the Best Friend You Met in Middle School who will Never Graduate College

where longing is forbidden

i actually read her book when i was about twelve years old, in the most shocking and probably only example of me ever being ahead of a trend, and even at twelve i really loved everything she said. at that point in time i lived in fear of my mother's threats that she would come and throw everything away while i was school, and my small and very adhd mind simply could not grasp the concept of "have less stuff". have less of WHICH stuff? how? i'd never actually been taught how to clean my room besides being told "pick up stuff" and "be organized", and as she points out multiple times, cleaning is not an intuitive thing. it's a learned behavior and skill.

anyways. her entire philosophy centers on surrounding yourself with things that you love, and only things that you love (or things that you absolutely need). she explicitly says over and over again that it is not about throwing things away, it is not about minimalism, it is not about "what is the smallest amount possible that you can survive on". she literally has a whole section where she talks about how hard it can be to throw things away when you've lived in poverty all your life and you don't have absolute confidence that you can replace something that you really needed if it gets thrown out, even though you're not likely to ever really need it--you've just been conditioned to think that because that's literally how you survive, when you're poor. she talks about how that mindset can serve and how it can damage. she talks about how minimalism is sort of a rich people thing, cause they can afford to throw everything away.

on usefulness. on becoming both the blade and the lamb

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