Why You Should Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public

Or At Least Let Someone Wash Them For You

You know how they always say not to wash your dirty linen in public? I think they got it all mixed up. 


For the longest time, I have always made it my life's aspiration to be harmless. If all humans were flowers, I would be the unobtrusive wallflower — fading into the background gracefully and happy to do so. 

I never really knew why I did that. 

Growing up, we used to have this art class teacher who would come to class for our double period of Visual Arts and spend an entire period talking about yours truly. 

I would listen, mortified, as this teacher related to the rest of the class how smart I was, how quiet, and how I listened attentively. It was horrifying — I mean, it helped a bit that I had a crush on this teacher because he looked like a rapper I had a crush on at the time (does it make sense? I know, 12-year-olds are like that).

Still— who wants to listen to someone drone on about the same person for 30 minutes each day? Except it's our Lord and Saviour, no thanks.

 

It got so bad that someone actually reported to the principal. I'll probably never know who, but I have my suspicions. 

Me to the principal's son who was in my class

One day, the Rapper Lookalike teacher came into the class and announced that someone had reported him to the principal for talking about a certain student for one full period when we should have been learning mosaics and whatever else we were supposed to learn in art class. 

Poor Teacher. 

So he forthwith pledged not to talk about yours truly anymore. Which was a good thing, only my problems didn't go away so easily.
 

A quick backstory- after primary school, I wanted to switch schools so bad, so I ended up spending an entire term at home, hoping that somehow the school I wanted to go to would change their minds and accept new intakes for that year. But that was not to be.

Sadly, I had to resume in the second term at the school I so desperately wanted to get away from,  with a pile of notes and a tonne of coursework to catch up on. It was a bit overwhelming, especially having to leave pages and pages of space to "copy notes" because, of course, notes were marked, and I had to have my notes in all 12 subjects up-to-date before midterm. 

Luckily, I had the most understanding seatmate and friends, who offered to help me copy some of my notes. 

Thank you girls

Amidst all this, fighting for my life and just trying to understand what the hell was going on in maths class, some girls thought it was a good idea to pick on the new student. 

After school one day, these two girls "blocked me" and said things—

You think you're so intelligent
You think you're beautiful
You're an ugly, ugly girl
We don't want you here

And other stuff I can't remember. 
 

It was funny because I literally wasn't thinking. I was just trying to get through the term in one piece.

I would dread the break periods because there were no teachers to stop these taller girls from "putting me in my place".

They would accost me and generally do what bullies do— which is be mean and try to put others down.

It's amazing how years later, when people would talk about getting bullied, I would sympathise with them, not from a place of, "I've been through this myself and it sucks", but from something like, "Poor you, that must have been really traumatising" Because for some reason, I could not remember that I had experienced something similar myself.

It wasn't a memory I actively chose to suppress, but somehow I did not remember it until many years later. 



Our brains often have ways of "protecting" us from perceived harmful memories. Because they appear too much to handle, our minds try to push them away— the way we would stuff dirty clothes in a bag and hide them behind a door, or somewhere else. 

On the surface, everything looks clean and neat, but under the bed is a pile of dirty clothes stuffed in an old bag, out of sight. 

You come into your room and at first, you do not notice that something is off because everything looks perfect until you start searching for your favourite sweater or the dress you got for your birthday last year. 


The danger with suppressing memories is that we often lose parts of ourselves in the process. 

All of a sudden, it seems like you are reading a story with too many cut-out parts. What is left does not make much sense, but you cannot figure out where the rest of the story went. 

You trying to figure out how tht different versions of yourself fit together.

If you want to clean your room and take care of the messy laundry, it makes more sense to sort out the clothes that need washing and load them in the washer.

Hiding them away might seem like a quick fix, but it also means you could never use those clothes for as long as they are hidden and unwashed. 


I cannot imagine that anyone has a perfect life or childhood (I mean, even our Lord and Saviour got abandoned as a child— unintentionally, of course!) But you see. 

As long as we love and live and walk the face of the earth, we are like children playing in a park; our clothes are bound to get dirty— stained with experiences and smeared with interactions. While we cannot change the probability that someone would decide to run at us with muddy palms and "stain our white", we can choose what happens afterwards. We can decide to wash ourselves clean. 

Because if we hide away parts of ourselves each time they get hurt or smeared, pretty soon we would have nothing left of us. We would be empty. 

Just like with clothes, some stains are easier to get off than others. 

For some, you don't need much effort to get them off. They wash so clean that you do not even remember they were ever stained in the first place.

Some others are not that easy. Even after the third wash, you can still see an ugly stain that reminds you of the moment you dropped soup all over your white dress.

Perhaps you have tried to get over the hurt of past experiences, but no matter what, the stain stares back at you with a "what-are-you-going-to-do-about-me" look.

Perhaps you've given up on that outfit —on that part of your life—because it feels ruined; maybe you've resigned to tossing it in the trash. 

There is someone who can help you get the stain off. It doesn't matter how difficult and stubborn it is, or how long it has been there, caked in over the years and resistant to all your best efforts— there is Someone who can get them off. 

But you'd have to let Him see your pile of dirty clothes. 


You have to come clean with everything you would rather suppress and hide away, and let Him take care of the messiness. 

Because those clothes—the memories you have hidden away— are still useful, they can still serve for better, happier occasions, if you let Him wash them.


What's in your laundry basket?


“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.”

Isaiah 1:18 NKJV

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