In high school I would sit on my bedroom floor, cross-legged, and listen to music for hours. I would sit on that teal colored rug, staring at the tan stain in the corner from nail polish remover I had spilled. I'd listen to all the voices telling me how to feel about everything in my world. My mother would open the door, never preceded by a knock, and ask me what how my homework was coming. In all my recollections of my mother at home she is always holding a laundry basket. As I look toward my own future motherhood, future matrimony, I do not see a laundry basket in my hands. I'm not sure why my mother did all of the housework, why she didn't have us do more to help, make us responsible for our own things.
I didn't do laundry until halfway through my first semester of college. An overweight, teddy-bear shaped boy named Gordy taught me. For the first few loads he supervised me, explaining how you can mix whites and darks if you wanted by using cold water. This horrified me. My mother would never do such a thing. I chose to laboriously separate my whites and darks, checking in with Gordy to see where grey was supposed to go. The first time I did laundry alone, I forgot the soap and simply rinsed my clothes. I did not realize this until they were finished drying and it occurred to me that I had forgotten this step. I think I washed them again. My roommate made fun of me. She loved the color black and had teenbeat posters of boy bands on her side of the room. She got upset because no one would come in and ask for her. When I came home late from the Tampa clubs, she made me easy-mac. I was always appreciative.
On the floor in my childhood bedroom, I created a world inside my mind with the music. I was a woman scorned, an outcast misunderstood, a lover trying to make things right with her man. Sometimes I walk by the middle school girls in the cafeteria and wonder if there is one of them who was like me. Purposefully isolated and always entertained. I don't believe there is one person who really understood my head during those times, myself included. Now as I listen to that same music, songs I haven't heard since the teal rug, I miss that girl.
I miss having mini dramas that consumed every breath, every moment. I miss writing in my journal by flashlight, hidden under the covers in my bottom bunk bed, moving the blue ink slowly so my sister would not wake. It would get so hot I would pull the blanket down from my head, lift my face up and take a few replenishing breaths. I wrote until my hand ached and my eyes began to close. So many of the pages end this way, incoherent thoughts and shaky letters, as if suddenly an old woman borrowed my pen. I miss the word "someday," how writing that word held so much agonizing possibility. I have always hated not knowing the future. Would he still like me? Would she ever be nice to me? Would I ever get invited to those parties? Would I ever feel like I belonged somewhere? Someday...
I think I'm still waiting. Although sometimes the not belonging feelings, the unsteadiness, is only followed by being able to look back and see how I got through something scary. I felt things so intensely on those journal pages. I really lived each day attuned with how I felt about what happened around me and to me. I miss that girl, the one who knew with certainty how uncertain it all was, and made it all ok for herself. I think the adult me loses that ability, struggles with trying to make it all ok for everyone around me, rather than taking care of myself.
Maybe that explains why my mom was always holding a laundry basket.
