Sometimes there’s a tissue in the wash

Sometimes there’s a tissue in the wash.

The washing machine goes on as normal.

But later, when you’re checking how long there is left in the cycle, you see it – front and centre – lodged in the rubber seal between the drum and the door.

I didn’t check the pockets/ No one ever checks their pockets/I just chucked it all in because there’s never any time/Why is it my job, anyway?

Viewpoints swirl and blur in the tumble drier of your mind.

Except you don’t have a tumble drier.

The wash cycle ends, you open the door, and pull it all out. A sheet, a towel, pants and socks, school uniform, your favourite t-shirt – the one with the ammonite on it. Damp, cold, and covered in bits of tissue.

Shake it. Rub it together. Pick bits off. Check for more bits, then give up and hang it up to dry. Sweep up the mess. But there it is, the laundry, slowly drying, with twisted fragments of tissue stuck to it, in the kitchen, where it’s warmest; where everyone always is.

Some bits don’t come off until they’ve been through the wash again. Some bits drop off your t-shirt as you wear it, bits you haven’t seen, bits you thought weren’t there. You sweep up the bits you find, now hyper-aware that there will have been/be bits you haven’t. And checking makes no difference.

Don’t you check the pockets?! Why do you put it all in together? It gets on everyone’s stuff!

They laugh, or commiserate, or their exasperation manifests as anger, but time passes; cycles endure.

Sometimes it’s fine, and there has been no need for tissues, so there are none lurking in the laundry basket. But sometimes it’s not fine, and sometimes there’s a tissue in the wash.

#mentalhealth #mentalheathawareness #mentalhealthawarenessweek