Dirty Linens
Hiding behind a laundry metaphor to talk about therapy
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Last week I shared with you all an interview I did with my friend Kaitlyn Elizabeth where I talked about my experience in therapy. This letter to Myles is about a small moment that set me on the journey of seeking one. My hope, as always, is that one day he will get a better sense of who I am—and who I was. My deeper hope is that, through these words, more men will seek support when we need it. And not just any support, but the kind that helps us feel whole, because we are worth it.
Dear Myles,
Sometimes we treat the people we love like our dirty laundry; we bring them our soiled linens, hoping and expecting they will help clean both the clothes and the feelings that stained them. I’m not really sure if this metaphor works, because here’s the problem: people in our lives aren’t laundromats. In fact, the people in our lives already have their soil linens too. It’s too much for them to wash both their shit and yours.
I had a hard day of teaching. The kind of day where you want to go home and tell your best friend about it. Your mother and I are in bed, and I start telling her what’s been bothering me. She says she can’t right now. She’s upset with me about something else that I can’t even recall.
We argue. This is too much for her to wash. She can’t put aside her own feelings to deal with mine, because not every machine can handle every load, and frankly she shouldn’t have to. Some people can handle a few shirts and socks. But when you come in carrying blankets soaked from a storm, you might need an industrial machine.
It took me a long time to realize she couldn’t hold space for me at that moment. Not only because she was upset, but because she is human. And it’s not her job to wash my laundry. [This metaphor doesn’t work because you don’t need a degree to wash clothes. But I’m too far away to turn back now.]
I left the bed and went out to the car to call a friend. I scrolled through my contacts and realized at that moment, I didn’t feel like I could call anyone. It’s not that I didn’t have friends. It’s that everyone wants to wash clothes the way they think they should be washed: warm, cold, gentle cycle, bleach, fabric softener. They want to give advice, tell you what to do and how to do it. Sometimes we don’t even know what the right wash is, or what we need, but we know we can’t carry the pile alone.
I needed something delicate. [Wait, maybe this metaphor does work.] I knew I had a problem because the only person I knew I could talk to, someone I felt safe with, was my friend E, who was also the principal at the school where I was teaching. Yes, I called my boss. I called her with tears in my eyes and explained how I was feeling. I felt almost embarrassed, because here I was calling my boss.
Commercial break: I hope you know this wasn’t some ordinary school. The women I met while teaching there not only taught me to teach, they also taught me it was okay to feel and be vulnerable as a Black man. In fact, that made me special as a teacher.
So instead of calling HR, E listened to me with such ease and love as I showed her some deep stains. It was about 11pm on a school night, but she made it feel like Sunday morning, like she didn’t have anywhere else to go. She knew how to wash these kinds of clothes, because she went to a dry cleaner!
Ok, this metaphor doesn’t work.
“You need a friend,” she told me. She didn’t mean someone like your mother, or someone already in our life who gives us advice. She was talking about someone you pay to wash your clothes, but they’re experts at washing and getting those deep stains out. The ones that have been there since childhood. The ones we walk around with without even realizing our clothes are soiled. The ones that carry trauma, sometimes generationally.
It’s been three years since that night. And since then, I’ve been working with someone who knows how to handle the toughest stains in my life. He has a PhD in poop stains and countless hours of experience working with the kinds of dirt and spots the world throws at Black men, because he is a Black man too.
When I tell him about my anxiety, we talk about what that feels like in my body. How our feelings are natural, and that when we are aware of them we can choose differently. When I tell him about the people in my life who hurt me, we talk about how sometimes our body responds as if they are still in the room, and the work we do in therapy is reminding ourselves they are not. When I tell him I’m worried about becoming the kind of father my father was, he reminds me that I get to be my own person, that I get to outgrow what I was given, and that I don’t have to wear what was handed down to me.
He holds space for me as if my clothes are the only ones in the washer, carefully treating each stain without judgment or hurry.
I don’t think this laundry metaphor works, but I’ve come too far and I must finish it now.
After 3 years in therapy here what I’ve learned:
Feelings need sorting.
Some things you can throw in with everything else,
but some things bleed if you are not careful.
Childhood trauma is like a red sock in a load of whites.
Myles, after you were born, I knew that I had to stick with my therapist for as long as I could.
I don’t want to pretend my clothes are clean. Some people hand the pile to the person they love most. Therapy taught me the pile is mine, but I don’t have to wash it alone.
And maybe love is not washing someone's clothes for them. Love is helping them learn how to wash their own.
Love,
Daddy
P.S Today is also my birthday and I’m spending the morning reading to your class 🎂
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Let me know your thoughts:
Do you sort your laundry or throw everything in together?
Who helps you carry the pile when it gets too heavy to hold alone?
For my brothers, do you find it hard to ask for help?
Ever had a colleague that supported you way beyond the job?
These are always a pleasure to read. Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday, Marc, from another Pisces. I loved your post!