I’ve been known to detonate upon disturbance. It stems from living in the shadows of my true nature. Hiding from myself.
I got pissed Sunday. I came outta hiding.
I said to my son, I’m tired of feeding the resentment that your time is more valuable than mine. He had copious homework and still needed to change spark plugs on the truck. I compensated and covered for him. Shoulder aching and righteousness burning because I luxuriated in the warm wash of rage once again. Plus, even though I said I wasn’t going to, I scrubbed his shower. Tried, once again, to titrate my anxiety of mildew and screwy social roles into a finished product of squeaking clean. It never works. And then I ended up doing the dishes anyway.
On multiple levels I’m done believing the lie that cleanliness is next to godliness. It’s propaganda. It tells me reinforces the idea that I am dirty– sinful – tainted, and that I need cleansing to be pure (again).
My true nature is dirty and pure.
I clean I clean I clean.
I clean, therefore I exist.
I exist, therefore I clean.
If I clean up after myself, I’m a good gurl. I am worthy. I matter. Like the woman in the New Yorker cartoon after her near death experience says to her friend near her hospital bed, “my whole life flash before me and half the time I was folding laundry.”
I’m striving to be a good gurl. And, up until now, all this striving was creating a life of strife. In the micro moments that matter, I can see this clearly. I have that clarity of awareness that when I start doing dishes while my son is already doing the dishes, I’m thinking I’m a help, a true support, and meanwhile I nurse a manipulative mammary gland—the twisted teat that tells me he’ll like me more if I contribute.
I call bullshit.
Really what I’m doing is I’m subtly enabling another man to think a women’s worth is based on a women’s work. He doesn’t need that any more than I need it.
Doing the dishes, I’m slowly burning the story into my mind that his time is more important than mine. This is a clear example of me conjuring my own poison. I’m aware that I’m feeding a growing resentment. This groove in my mind in which I notice that I’m spinning the story that I am spending half my life folding the proverbial laundry. (And I’m not even wearing the clothes to do anything fun.) The clean underwear I put on, which I quit folding by the way, I just shove in a drawer, well I put them on, in case of accident, and then get ready to fold more laundry
What I know for certain is I’m tired of folding laundry for half of my lifetime, aren’t you?