Once a forest green

The spinning vortex sucked me back into a painful habit once again. With all the best intentions change doesn’t come easily. Habits stick to me like cobwebs, determined to string a trail to me, so that I can always be dragged back. 

They cling to me, forcing me to collect the same things from the supermarket every time; to drive the same way to work every day and to end the night with a glass of red wine.

Habit is why that forest green-coloured t-shirt is tumbling around in the grip of the vortex. The churning water seeping through to its core, touching parts deeper within it than ever I could.

Life goes on for some, but mostly for me, I’m not in control. Life does what it likes to me.

I kneel and watch the suds behind the glass start to accumulate. A frothing of the mouth, chewing out the germs and the dirt of memories. It hasn’t been worn for almost a year now and the amount of washes that it has had in that period almost matches the number of nights I’ve spent crying alone in bed.

While most of my days are just blankly autonomous, that day I remember clearly. Some things are just so innocent and far from danger that never do they enter as potential life-ruining, life-changing factors in it all. He had just been coming down the stairs to greet me home with a kiss.

The official consensus was that his ankle had given out at the top of the stairs. I had been at the bottom looking up and I had seen him crumble, suddenly unsupported. He’d tilted to one side and then forward and then down. At some point on the falling, he had gone limp, a heart attack, maybe induced by panic or fear on the way down. Maybe a panic that he was going to reach the bottom broken and be a burden on me. Perhaps a fear that the fall was going to rip us apart.

Whatever it was, the fall did sever us. He never made it down those stairs. I sat and held his lifeless body, my fingers scrunching his green t-shirt tightly. I held on for a lost age before I had called for help.

When his clothes from that day were returned to me, the first thing I pulled out of the bag was the shirt. I left everything else, I just wanted this which had been the last thing close to his beating heart. Before throwing it into the machine, I smelled the shirt to grab a reminder of his scent, to potentially bring him back to life at least in my head. But I could only smell lifelessness. My emotions spiralled and it had to be cleansed.

Now it’s a waiting game. Waiting for another cycle to be completed. From the moment of starting the washer to the time that it grinds to a halt is just time wasted. The laundry cycle creates a limbo, a void in the day.

It’s too short of a cycle to leave the house and do any meaningful shopping. It’s too short to prep and cook and eat a proper meal. Yet it’s too long to sit and enjoy a coffee without dead space at the bottom of the cup.

The cycle usually ends up being the perfect amount of time just to sit and stare peacefully out of the window at life going on, a time short enough to not let grief creep up on me. Or it fits perfectly for more cleaning. It’s usually the latter and I hate how the snowball effect happens. But I know now that I have the perfect amount of time during a wash cycle to vacuum the apartment, polish the dining table and make the bed in an ambling malaise.

The thick warm air of the drier floods my space, even with the windows open. It’s a thing. I must be in front of the washer at the very moment that its lock releases with a quiet click. Things can’t wait. The clothes must be transferred to the dryer immediately. It's likely more about me checking that the shirt is there than anything else.

Thus the shirt has its cycle.

Nobody knew that I wore the shirt underneath my outfit at the funeral. It was wrapping me, comforting me through the whole ordeal. I held in as many tears as I could that day, so I wouldn’t expose my weakness of being a blubbering mess. Maybe some people thought of me as cold, uncaring and unloving. It’s not true. I just don’t like sharing my grief. It’s mine. It’s special. It’s unique. It’s private. No-one knows how I felt then or indeed feel now.

I slept in the shirt that night, then I had to immediately wash it the next morning. I had had a dream of him coming to me wearing it, reaching out his hand to try and touch me. But in it, we were opposing magnetic poles, repelling each other before we could meet. I awoke in a cold sweat, the shirt drenched and sullied. 

I attributed the cause of the dream to my wearing of the shirt. I didn’t want to be haunted by memories, I wanted to reach the point where I could only have memories of celebration, of enjoying him. I had to wash it clean.

That when it got its own cycle.

But no amount of these cycles have managed to wash away the pain.

I pull out the clothes form the drier and dump them all on the bed. A bed which is too big for me now. But who downsizes a bed after losing a loved one?

So it starts again. Habit. I dig through the pile of clean clothes, static electricity snapping at me. I release the shirt from the pile and shake it out, the forest green colour well past its glory. It's faded into an autumnal drabness of something dull and lifeless. Frayed threads escape uniformity.

It doesn't matter, as I walk with it pressed loving against my face, the warmth kissing my tired, sagging cheeks. 

It is how we used to hold. Closely. Tight warmth flowing back and forth between us. No words needed. The physical contact was everything. I stand like that, my face wrapped in the warm darkness of it, until all the glowing feeling that it sparks inside of me, fails me and coldness takes over.

As the warmth fades, slowly in creeps the pain of not being able to experience his closeness ever again. That it's done. It's over. A harsh reality that none of it felt like it was ever enough. It sparks a flood of more painful memories and those, in turn, remind me of how many of them I wish I could wash away.

I put the shirt straight back into the washing machine. It will stay there, gradually accumulating company throughout the week. It will sit there before my grief and memories once more get a cleansing and the cycle of being able to bear life alone continues.