#i’m actually a pretty chill person i was just navigating constant minefields

[perditious]

i think i’m pointedly noncommittal about the shoes in the house thing because of my aunt, one of two adults who shaped the vast majority of my youthful impressions of the world (she and my mother did this by simply not letting me touch grass or interact extensively with other people unmonitored).

she is Very Normal about a number of things including Cleanliness and had a ‘landing pad’ inside her front door for everyone’s shoes and she got upset if the vacuum marks on the carpet got disturbed and put down literal walking paths of contact paper for contractors. even as a silly child who didn’t know a single thing yet (other than ‘do not leave footprints on the rug or disturb the world by leaving a single trace of your presence’) i would listen to her get upset about like the guys who installed her fridge stepping on the floor WHILE MANEUVERING A REFRIGERATOR INTO HER HOME and be like hmm this seems. like a lot. possibly the opposite of how i want to be. moving a fridge sounds hard and a footprint on linoleum does not seem like a hanging offense (reason to call someone’s manager) (ma’am you are a parody of a cliche).

which sounds very wise of child-me but do NOT worry i was also internalizing so many things, sponge-like, that would cause various problems and disordered eating patterns later on down the road. the white women from whence i came are nothing if not hilariously predictable (in hindsight) about shunting their unexamined generational and situational trauma directly into crippling yet sitcom-like control issues (and also children in their care). i like to say im still figuring out who i am but at least ive got several blueprints for what i don’t want to be. and i like to say it real deadpan, because lol i mean it.