Dirty Laundry.

I’ve had this laundry basket in my life for more than a decade but less that two. I have no idea where it’s from, how many came in the pack it was in, how much it was or when it was made. I just know it. It’s like a weird old friend. It’s part of my child hood. 

When I was young it held my school clothes  and graphic tees from Tammy. Through my childhood years it must have held so many things that I’d left in my pocket: money, notes from friends, tears sodden tissues from heart break, homework, rocks, hair bands, clips, craft blades and god knows what else. It’s something I can remember in almost all of my homes bar one. I have a ridiculous way of getting attached to the stupidest things. I always have. One winter I hoarded several Next sale bags of conkers that I had collected, even when they began to smell I just couldn’t let them go. I cried when they finally went. I’ve always been an overly emotional, extra sensitive person. Everything and anything hurts my feelings. It all gets to me. Almost nothing slips part my emotional net. Dead bee on the floor? I’m sad for the hive that lost a little fat fluffy soldier. Homeless person begging? I’ll give whatever I have to give. A friend in pain? I’ll serve as a shoulder for as long as they need. Trauma survivor? I’ll let them inflict their pain on me. Maybe they’ll feel better now they’re no longer the victim. Lonely person? I’ll mold myself into anyone. I say all that like it’s all on the same level and all things I still do... that’s not true. I don’t do the latter two anymore. Anyways that laundry basket. For a few years it’s errant from my life, I know it’s still knocking around somewhere in the space behind me and the life I no longer lead. I know it’s probably doing what it’s always done, hold clothes. Store the days dirt and emotional luggage until it’s ready to be washed away. Tears on sleeves... blood and sweat too. Dropped food from shared meals around a table, hair from family members, whatever else clothes catch during the time they’re worn. It holds all of it. One day it gets handed back into my life full to the brim with my old life. Books, text books, note books, exercise books. Shoe box, retainer box, mascara box. Posters, papers, paraphernalia of the teenage life I haven’t lived for years. I bring it to my new home. It takes me a while but I finally go through it. I go through all the memories I’ve been hiding from for years, I find things that remind me it wasn’t so bad and other that remind me of how bad it was sometimes. Things that reassure me that I was loved and remind me that I was alone. I find a version of myself that I’m so glad I no longer am and other versions of me that I’m glad I took elements from to create this final me. I say final... we are all always growing, right? Learning, changing. It’s never really over is it? I’m not the person I was yesterday or the person I will be tomorrow. I’m not the person I was ten years ago when I was a fifteen-year-old. I’ve lived many lives between now and then. Eventually I whittle that over flowing, heavy basket all the way down to a single barely full shoe box. I cry while I walk to the bin and throw the black bag of whatever I wanted to let go of and turn back to my home. Even though I know I’ve thrown it all away I can feel the weight of it all pulling me down somewhere in my head. It pushes down on my shoulders and I feel that gravity pull at every cell in my body. Even as I walk back into the threshold of my home I can feel it still with me. Now I have a laundry basket again. Weirdly even though I had my own home for years I’d never bought a laundry basket. So here we are me with no place to put my now family of threes dirty clothes and an empty laundry basket with a new home and purpose. Well it’s original purpose. Me and my laundry basket start working together. But no matter what I do I can never empty it. I can never see the bottom of that basket.  Sometimes I can barely even see the basket because there are so many clothes in it. Depending on how depressed I am it gets even more so overwhelmed. The way I crack in the night and randomly panic myself into a heap of tears and turmoil it too strains under the weight of clothes and days without being emptied. It creaks and bends as I do because I’m struggling to keep up with my yoga meaning my back locks up and my sciatica leaves me in agony so bad I can’t breathe. It carried the bloodied dresses and clothes from labor and birth that I couldn’t face for months because touching them gave me flash backs. It carried my sons countless baby grows and towels through my early motherhood. It’s carried me through all the loads of laundry I had to do during my husband’s countless eczema flare ups. Then it carried the clothes my son went through when his eczema reared it’s head. It carried towels covered in clumps of my long black hair. It held clothes drenched in the blood of a miscarriage. It’s amazing what an inanimate bit of plastic can hold when you can’t. Slowly, I began to be able to pick it up and carry it to the washing machine instead of  dragging it there. Slowly there was space to have it separated in the basket so I could wash it it in sections. I would wipe it down with disinfectant once a week. But still it wouldn’t empty, never quite fully. This year has been a really weird one for me. I’ve lost so much and gained even more. Even the clothes that I now put in the basket are almost all new or in the process of being replaced. Me and my basket work together on Mondays, Tuesday mornings, Fridays and Sunday mornings.  We have a routine and we have an understanding. Today, it’s empty. I have no laundry in my laundry basket. So I got in it. I’m the last thing in the house with stains and dirt. As I sat in my basket on the bathroom floor from that me and my baby boy share I realised how that I had come. I even texted my husband because I was on the edge of tears. He was proud of me. Me and my laundry basket have been through a lot together and I’m so glad for it all. I hope in almost two decades from now we’re still together. Love 

Monica xxx