Grief is a growing pile of dirty laundry
The disintegration of time and the accumulation of unwashed socks.
I am writing this three days (and then, three weeks) after having come back from France, where I managed to meet my parents and two siblings. I’m returning from what was a month of travel that felt like months. This I can say is certain: lately, my perception of time is well warped. It moves so quickly, and yet it all feels very long. I did not anticipate this, yet this month of being with family was restorative. What was only a month of extreme grief in September—October felt like an age. When I look back at it, I recall it as a month of grief, which is probably when I was confronting it the most. But I recently reread my journal entries (while reviewing my year, a new year tradition), and was surprised to find that the feelings of grief had started well before — in August. When I had time for some academic work post-holiday celebrations, I was surprised to see how much time had passed from my advisor’s comments on my manuscript. October 28 was the date of the comments, which I was convinced were just a couple of weeks ago. Had I left these revisions untouched for that long? Do I even have a memory of what I had done in those weeks? Some events, yes, but the days went by so passively. I remember writing some songs while tormenting myself at how slow I’m being, at how there is no burst of creativity in sight. I performed said song with trembling hands and voice, two minutes after receiving terrible, defeating news. I was not present with the song I came to love despite the frustration of writing it, and I can’t bring myself to sing it again, because I worry I forgot the arrangement I made for it. I remember I got very stubborn tahini stains on my olive green pants. I remember trying to write my manuscript, or run some analyses, and taking hours to write a paragraph. But why these things took so much time, why I was passive in their doing, I don’t know. I didn’t feel like it was an immense amount of time, but I would notice it suddenly, when it was too late to do other things I was counting on doing before the day ended, while having done little in the way of what I planned. The laundromat closes at 7:00 PM and I am staring at 7 lines I wrote in 4 hours. Where was time going? It wasn’t that my mind was wandering, it was more that it was moving incredibly slowly at every step.
The way I explained it to myself and others was that it feels like what a concussion must feel like. Like what I had studied about concussions, but coming from a mental emotional state. Alternatively, it feels like I’m in a cognitive state of just-woken-up-from-little-sleep-and-I’m-not-ready-for-it all day. After some weeks of this state, I noticed that I had never given much thought about the cognitive effects of grief. My short-term memory was stubbornly on strike. Tasks that needed some foresight and some division into steps were impossible to take on. Out of all my shortcomings, the face of this became the laundry. The manuscripts, the research, these took a pause. Cooking went out the window (a special thank you to fruits, yogurt, and Rx bars for sustaining me). Exercising waxed (when I tried to morph grief into an anger burst that can lift very heavy weights) and waned (when I had less patience for the performativeness and feel-look-good of the gym). So did socializing. So did many tupperwares, jackets, and things I can’t remember losing, get lost in space and time. But days and weeks and months pass easily without realizing the absence of long manuscripts, elaborate meals, or much party-attending. But the laundry: every day I chose among a dwindling choice of socks and underwear I liked less and less. This has holes, that lost its elasticity, those are for Christmas. As I got closer to the bottom of that drawer, I was reminded daily that I can’t manage to take care of this overflowing bag of clothes. That, what have I been managing, at all, these months?
Carve out 2 hours of at-home time for laundry. Walk 2 minutes to the laundromat, unload into a machine, come back in 30 minutes, transfer to the dryer, and come back in 30-45 minutes. Fold soon after.
Impossible. Overwhelming. Intimidating. There are enough third rank socks to wear for me to avoid this.
From September 3 until October 18, I neglected the laundry, as I neglected other things either absent-mindedly or because I wasn’t sure I could commit to them. Inexplicably, the day came when I had it in me. I’m not sure how or why, but I mustered to do it. In my ecstasy, I took a picture and shared it with friends who had heard my laundry stories, and who had offered to do it for me (again, I could not commit to meeting them and waiting with them for the time it takes).
The day of this feat, I even painted a sketch I did 6 months ago. The day after, I (apparently) wrote something about grief, when I seemed to get out of the concussion-state and into the mind of a writer for an hour:
October 19, 2024: Time is moving very slowly from a mark. And time is flying by for my responsibilities. Time is disintegrated. I’ve felt like I’m moving along in very thick fog, not able to see much of what I plan to do ahead, nor able to look back at what I did these past days, or even earlier today, or who it was I talked to. At the same time, I’ve come to understand and relate to many things — the many faces of grief, the behaviors people have that I was never fully convinced of, the new behaviors people close to me have in this situation. Or how concussed I feel with the disbelief of how many things I keep forgetting or have lost recently.
With all of this, I’ve noticed that I’ve been indulging in so many beauties - natural and human. I’ve been thinking a lot about the everyday beauty that we don’t even ask for — they only ask for some attention. Canopies of foliage, moonbows, lavenders, surprise creeks, cotton candy clouds, wind, breeze, sunlight that warms but doesn’t burn or hurt, prism colors through the tears on lashes while looking into the sunlight. And I’m nearly overwhelmed by the friendships that surround me: their quality, and their sheer amount, I’m incredibly grateful. So many have come to be with me, to talk about things, to distract me, to sing and play, to have a walk, to make me coffee or breakfast or dinner, to watch me fold my laundry, to take me out, to watch heavy movies with me, or to be patient when I don’t respond for days or for weeks.
But after all of this, guilt occasionally creeps up about if I should be indulging in all this beauty in the first place, and after that, if I should be sharing it at all, this appreciation of beauty. But I’ve thought, written, and talked to dear friends about these guilts, and here are some things to convince ourselves as true.
Beauty and cruelty happen at the same and even in the same places. They can coexist. They coexist all the time. One doesn’t reduce the other, for better or for worse. And it would be naïve or a shame if thinking of one too much would cloud over the other;
For the most part, people want others to enjoy life and see its good parts (while acknowledging 1), and sharing about the good things is uplifting for whoever hears it;
It is important to take care to notice and appreciate beauty, and this is something that can be extended to others similarly affected by the coexisting cruelty. It is far too easy to stop seeing the beauty in clouds or trees during war. But we can see noticing beauty as a consolation we can give others.
Something about my state of mind must’ve allowed for these things to happen: to accept the coexistence of moonbows and inflicted death; to decide to write about it; to also do the laundry.
The rest of things did not magically get better along with the restocked choice of socks, disappointingly. But I think I navigated through an acceptance of my changed habits and tolerances. I cycled to and from work (24 km) since the gym was unappealing, and the uncertainty of how I would feel in large gatherings became more familiar and manageable. I look back and I see that I wrote songs, essays, analyses, letters, and journal entries; and yet none so sufficiently to call them done. I had a show in November then in December that I practiced arduously for, and instantly forgot right after I expelled them to the public which I promised them to. From the tangible things, I can look, somehow dissociatingly, at my past self who was grieving hard, and see that I really was trying to do things. It feels like a person who kept jumping not quite high enough to hop over the fence of inadequacy.
Now I still am worse than I was at doing the laundry pre-grief, but since October 18, my good friend offered to do the laundry for me, and I accepted even though I had plenty of socks to still choose from. Since finally-laundry-day, I give myself a pass and take up the wash and fold service option. My laundromat is run by a wonderful Tibetan family whose daughter runs around the hall screaming in excitement or frustration, depending on the day. I’ve heard her babbling and now hear her excitingly scream grammatical sentences. Their son sells commissioned art including an impressive crayon rendition of Starry Night. The father waves and smiles at me if we catch each other on the street, and that extra-laundromatic acknowledgement is enough. The mother smiles and saves me extra quarters by way of laundry tips, and sometimes opens early or closes late for me too. I help the family with what my wash and fold money gets to improve for them, and they help me overcome the growing pile of reminders of my grief. It’s a symbiosis of treating stained feelings and fabrics.
Thanks for reading. This piece is going to followed by a piece with a title along the lines of “Grief, Gratitude, Grief, Gratitude”, an elaboration on the italic paragraph of this entry. It follows the cycles of these two things in daily life, as I experienced them in the recent months before January. I might also publish excerpts from my journal, on trying to understand my “all-over-the-news” grief. Do stay tuned.
I appreciate you reading this more fragile piece, and I do hope you follow along.
With love and hope,
Duri.