about GIFTS

recieving gifts is always so stressful, difficult, burdensome......

most social customs are at least questionable, and so is this insistence people have on "surprises".  Every gift has to be a surprise.

Listen for a second in spite of how priveleged and ungrateful I sound; I'm so sick of dreading these times of year because I'm gonna have to deal with the things people make me take.

it would be so much EASIER for me to accept something if it wasn't brand new-- I don't buy things brand new, and I don't want brand new things.  It stresses me the hell out.  It's just how I am.  I'm anticonsumerist and if you know anything about that you get why.  And this is just one of those things about me that is impossible to respect.  ok....

well, I'm really struggling to write about this without going crazy because are you thinking the same thing I am right now??  About how someone is buying you a gift, as if to do something nice, as if to show they care, but they're incapable of actually asking what you actually need or want, incapable of listening to or considering what you say you actually need or want, incapable of considering what you say you really-really-please do not want, incapable of doing anything except....robotically....going to the Store and buying A Gift (Surprise!).......  

Clothes that don't fit you, or you can't stand the feel of, something you already have, that all could've been avoided if they just asked "hey, would you want this?"

It's crazy!!!  This is literally completely irrational unreasonable ridiculous behavior.  Why can people not stop doing this?!?  I'm serious, this is shit is ridiculous and it drives me crazy!

You can tell me I need to be appreciative and kind but when this happens every birthday and christmas I lose all the sympathy I could have.  I don't have any "it's the thought that counts" left in me.  It truly is just inconsiderate to care more about the act of giving someone a gift than the actual person you're giving it to.  And the money you're wasting....

And if you have the heart to say anything about it, who's gonna actually listen to you?  They're gonna cry and fall apart or get mad and call you ungrateful, and either way they are not gonna understand or listen to what you're saying.  I am most grateful when people don't get me anything at all.  My birthday means nothing to me, I wish I could tell people seriously I don't have one.

Whooh maybe I'm really speaking about my own experience and not everything is like this.  I feel like "I desperately try to get through to people but no matter what I do they can't hear me and it makes me insane" is a core part of my experience.

Anyway, here comes christmas.