So, a friend asked me this morning how my experience of this day has changed since my relationship with the church has changed. That give me a pause.

I had to be truthful and say that there is less joy on this particular day, but also less stress. There is more contemplation. And more spreading of the spirit of generosity throughout the year. I don’t wait for a “reason” to be good and generous anymore. I try to love people because they need loving instead of “because it’s Christmas,” and I do that all year long.

Let me elaborate: I used to try to make Christmas perfect and I used to feel like a failure every year. Most years, I ended up crying. The schism between what I told myself I should do and what any human could do was just too extreme. Trying to take care of everyone’s emotional and material health while refusing to admit that Christmas is just a very fucking hard day for me personally was too much. I won’t go into the backstory of why that is: if you are a long time reader you already know, and if you aren’t, I’ve moved beyond it so it’s no longer pertinent to rehash. The point is that I now move through this entire holiday season (from Thanksgiving through New Year’s) at an emotional pace that works for me. I take care of myself mentally, and I have greatly lowered my expectations of myself and those around me. Amazingly enough, I’m not the only one to benefit: the people around me are also happier and less stressed.

Well, most of them. As for the rest…they did a great deal to contribute to that sense of guilt and failure that had come to mark my holiday. And I am pretty sure they still think I am a Christmas failure and should feel guilty. But this year, I gave myself the gift of declaring bullshit on that. This year, I don’t care what they think. This year, I asked myself if I would let a stranger treat me this way, and this year, I finally said “No.” Merry Christmas, and 364 other days of the year, to me.

You know, where she says “As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!”? Yeah, that one. Now, I admit that maybe 15-20% of this bounty arrived in a holiday basket. For which I am very grateful, do not misunderstand.

But if you have been following along in my brain lately, you know I have been doing a lot of thinking about stuff and the amount of guilt my possessions often represent for me. I’ve been downsizing, divesting, decluttering. De-guilting. For all that we hear about living within one’s means, I am trying to figure out (still) how to live within my SPACE. I’m good on means. F’real.

This picture is not just a picture of my pantry. It’s a picture of too much. That’s why looking at the kitchen after I finished re-arranging was so evocative for me. It absolutely represented how I see my things now. My things are taking up valuable space, space I need to live. I feel trapped in here. Not in my house– in my stuff.

I need to keep chanting what I have said before: “There is enough. There is always enough. As long as I am not greedy, there is enough of everything for everybody.” I don’t need to live anymore as if someone is going to tell me I have to burn half of my possessions. I deserve more freedom than that.

It’s a fact that I just went through my clothes, books, and craft supplies. It’s a fact that I need to do it again, preferably today. And then I need to spend the next 37 weeks not going to the grocery store, because that smaller, taller shelf–it cannot stay there forever. It prohibits unfettered access to my coffee pot.