My Stained Life

Wash, Rinse, Dry, Repeat.

Life is like a load of our favorite laundry. We spend an enormous amount of time washing it. We sort it by colors and fabric type. We sort it by underwear and socks, towels and sheets, jeans and shirts. Some of it has to be hand washed and fluff dried. Most of it we throw in the machine without a second thought and are surprised when we come out with pink socks. Then it's off to the dryer. Too hot and the sweaters will shrink. Too cool and it will covered in mildew and be damp.  Then it is folding time and putting it in the proper places. We spend our time trying to wash away the dirt and stains. Some of us wash and clean. Some of us would rather air out their dirty laundry to others. Some of us are color coordinated and some of us are color blind. In which case pink socks are not a big deal.
As my husband will tell you, I hate doing laundry. I feel like I am being sent down to the cave like basement to be punished by toiling away all of my time to wash, rinse, dry, and repeat.

Laundry is necessary. We all have to do it or we would look dirty and smell badly. Not really what most people strive to achieve. If life is like laundry then mentally ill people are forever in the laundry room. We deem ourselves dirty and stained. We are constantly trying to wash it away. We just want to be cleansed. We scrub the stains till our hands crack and bleed. They never come out despite the hours of elbow grease and specail soaps we apply. We just can't get the desired effect. It is time consuming and upsetting to work and work and never achieve what we are certain one more good scrub could eradicate.  I have decided that too much of my time is wasted by trying to scrub and wash away my mental illness. It is what it is. I want to jump in the mud puddles and play in the dirt. I don't really care if my clothes get dirty. I don't care if I have to wear the dreaded pink sock. I don't care if you see my stains. Getting dirty is a life well lived. It means you didn't stand on the side lines watching everyone else play jacks and marbles. It means you made mud pies and built sand castles. It means you allowed yourself to have fun. To live life. I am not saying I never need to do laundry again, but I'll wash it when my clothes are caked in the glorious aftermaths of  having a really fun and hard working day. I will wash them when I am good and ready. I will not bother to try to erase the stains I have been given. They are part of me and make me who I am. They are a timeline of how hard I participated in my own life, and proof that I was active. It is my story written by one stain at a time. The grass stains are from me crawling until I could stand. The mud stains are from me falling and getting back up. The  blood stains are from the scrapes I got when I forgot to be careful and had to learn my lesson the hard way. The food stains are from good meals shared with family and friends. The paint stains are from reinventing and rebuilding my life, which is always under construction. I will wear this garment until it is  worn and thread bare. I will dot it until it is marbled with the stains of my well lived life.I will stretch it out until it becomes ill fitting and uneven. And then and only then will I wash, rinse, dry, and repeat.
                         Neurotic Nelly