thoughts, words, deeds

admitting no shame

Huh. Well, first off, let me just let everyone know that I don’t let myself get shamed for anything. So, I’m not sure I get this question. I figure, if I’m going to do something, there’s no point on letting myself get second guessed at some later point by a person who judges my actions without being around in my head to deal with deciding on that action in the first place.

This is the result of living for most of my life with a mother who takes passive/aggressive to a studied level. My father is nearly as bad (possibly in self defense). Fortunately, she’s not as bad as my grandmother, who is the result of her grandmother (we’re talking my great-great grandmother, who took in my grandmother after my great-grandmother died and my great-grandfather basically abandoned the children, and proceeded to mess them up emotionally until my grandmother finally escaped into service (as a maid) at about fourteen) . . . so she can be reasoned with. Most of the time.

So, I’ve discovered that the only real way to live is to act in such a way that guilt cannot be thrust upon you. As a result—right now, my bed is unmade, and I don’t make it except when I’ve just washed the sheets. Most of my life is in boxes, and has been for about six months because I don’t want to have to unpack them, although I’ve been slowly unpacking books as I’ve needed them (my books alone were twenty boxes). I have the minimum amount of clothes unpacked. I have hardwood floors that I don’t sweep (or vacuum—I have a fear of vacuum cleaners that goes back to my senior year in high school).

I wash the dishes and clean the counters in a timely manner because I’m grossed out by bugs and it’s more difficult to wash off food when it’s dried on. I clean the bathroom regularly, again, because I don’t like to be grossed out. I clean the living room, but whenever I do, I have a bad attitude about it so that people don’t bug me when I’m doing it. I’m the oldest of six children. Everyone knew better than to be in my line of sight when I cleaned, although they had to be within earshot so that when I bellowed for them to come get some precious thing that they’d left on the floor for me to toss, they’d come quickly and quietly, get it, and go away again.

I don’t spend long lazy days in bed. In the first place, I need to get up regularly so that I can do my basal injection in a timely manner. After all, running high (this is a blood sugar/insulin issue. I inject so I don’t go high) makes me irritable. But after I inject and eat breakfast, I sometimes go back to bed. And sometimes get up. It depends on the day and my mood. Right now, I don’t have a job, so I spend some time every day trying to fix that.

I knit. This keeps my hands busy. I can knit while I’m watching TV or reading a book, and I do so. Some of what I make ends up on an etsy store that my mother has set up, so even that isn’t really lazy.

So, I guess the definition that I’ve come up with is, the right level of laziness is the level where everything gets done, eventually, and no one had better try and make me do things quicker than I’m good and ready to do them, because then, they get done slower. That’s the stubbornness thing. I get it from my parents.