TW & some context: The below essay discusses specific eating disorder behaviors and depressive thoughts. Feel free to skip it if these topics will mess with your brain. I wrote this essay almost two years ago, right after getting discharged from residential eating disorder treatment. It helped me make sense of just how low I felt in the height of my eating disorder. I hope it sheds some light on how eating disorders can coexist with and feed off of depression (or anxiety, or many other mental illnesses). The best thing I ever did was reach out for help from my doctors and therapist. If you’re struggling with these same thoughts or behaviors, I encourage you to do the same.
the laundromat
I have always loved laundromats. The smell of fabric softener tickling my nose, the white noise of washing machines and dryers cushioning my ears, the coolness of quarters breaking through the sweat on my palms just before they descend into the belly of the washing machine. Laundromats are places of ritual - where you go to literally air out your dirty laundry. Where you arrive with wrinkles and dirt and stench and stains, and leave with order and warmth and sweetness and the promise of cleanliness.
I spent an entire autumn at the laundromat in Mt. Pleasant.
I would get home from work just around dinner time, the time of day I hated most. That’s when the quiet of the day settled in and I was forced to hear my stomach gurgling, begging, pleading with me to feed it.
During the laundromat days, I would avoid all the cues indicating it was time for me to eat a meal by frantically stripping my bed of its sheets and my body of the clothes it wore that day. I would then drape the largest sweatshirt I could find in my closet over me, in hopes it would swallow me up and hide what lay beneath it.
I walked ten blocks each way to the laundromat on these trips. My brow glistened with sweat as I lugged with me both the weight of myself and my laundry bag.
Walking to the laundromat at dusk always felt like a kiss from the universe, or God, or whoever might really be calling the shots around here. I could see life happening around me without having to participate. I could watch people head to dinner, return home from work or reunite with their children after school. It was a perfect combination of the day ending and the night beginning that made me feel as though I was transcending time, not really having a presence in either. In those pink-hued moments of in-between, the laundry didn’t seem so heavy then. I didn’t feel so heavy then.
I would enter the laundromat, greet the owner at the register, and get just enough quarters to do my load, a routine $2.25. I would then head to my favorite set of machines, the ones across from the folding table all the way in the back. I would shove my clothes, my sheets and all of my feelings into the wash, feed it some quarters and just watch it all swirl around and around and around and around and around.
The water and soap washed any trace of me out of my belongings, alongside the dirt. This was the best part. This was why I kept coming back to the laundromat night after night. I could see myself literally wash away and I was mesmerized. It was then, in this quiet mediation, when I could finally — momentarily — catch my breath. Instead of feeling exhausted, sad and hungry, I felt relief.
I loved when the laundromat was empty, so I could sit on the floor with my back pressed against the cool glass of the bottom dryer. I would be so enthralled by my erasure, I never paid any mind to the dust bunnies that clung to my sweater.
Sometimes I pretended to read a book or watch the soccer game on the tiny television hanging above me. Most of the time I was too tired to pretend.
There was promise in this load of laundry. It could look and feel like new. And if it could do that night after night, maybe I could, too. Maybe I could starve the darkness out of me.
By the time my belongings finished in the dryer, the high I felt would fade.
I folded, then carried my laundry home with the evening breeze propelling me forward. My legs ached, my body exhausted from carrying me through another day with nothing but a coffee and an afternoon snack.
I would get back to my apartment and the excitement of the freshly-cleansed, slightly-warm sheets faded as I remembered that no matter how clean they were, I would still have to lay my body -- this body -- on them.
By the time I unlocked the door, any inner peace I chased with this trip would evaporate.
This often made me too tired to remake my bed, so I would settle with just enough to get by for the night: a sheet laid across the mattress, and a throw blanket from my drawer.
My laundry would sit, still perfectly folded, at the door.
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So beautiful. This line gives me chills: “the coolness of quarters breaking through the sweat on my palms just before they descend into the belly of the washing machine”
Your discomfort with your body, your erasure, your transcendence from reality. The safety net of a routine. It’s a feeling we all know and you describe it so so beautifully