don't forget your lotion

i am more than just clothes on a hanger and i need to moisturize

picture this: a compact laundry room. busy. staff working in a flurry. matching the edges of towels and folding them. once, twice, thrice. into a neat square. doing the same to bedsheets. clothes go on hangers, innerwear in drawers. dirty laundry divided into three and thrown into the washers. three dryers running.

everything has a tag, a number. a number each for the person whom it belongs to. no names exist here. only numbers. as impersonal as it can get.

in here, an old woman with drawn eyebrows applies lotion— nursing the hands that keep her fed. in more ways than one. her glasses have left a permanent indentation on the bridge of her nose. she looks at me over those glasses pointedly.

“no, no. not like that. you do it wrong, other way you fold.” she scolds me often in endearingly broken english. i wonder what she would say to me if i spoke her language. how untethered her tongue would get, how alive her vocal chords could become, how free she could be.

“do it like i do,” she says and i want to tell her that if she has a certain way to do things, then i do too. if she folds outwards, i fold inwards. in more ways than one. there’s a storm within me. huri.

it’s christmas eve. we work relentlessly for 10 hours. i fold my way. she does hers.

in here we are a little more than staff, a little less than machines. human, but not quite. robot, but not quite. there’s moments when we both fold inwards sometimes, though. we lock eyes and we understand. we’re both human in that moment. then the moment passes, and we continue our toil again.

the woman has lived a long life. nothing scares her, so she smokes three packets of cigarettes a day. even when her coughs sound like the worst noise i’ve ever heard a human produce in my life.

she’s worked relentlessly for eleven long years in laundry. unlike me, she knows very well what happens to hands when you don’t put lotion on them often. she knows what happens when you don’t look after the hands that keep you fed. so she gives me advice every so often, and i learn.

knowing clothes is easier than knowing people. in a year or two, you can remember every single clothing owned by a hundred different people but you can barely understand a single person in those years. even when you try your darnedest best.

“clothes are easier to be around than people,” she takes her first drag in. when the puff of smoke leaves her lungs, she closes her eyes, leans her head back as her body relaxes into the chair. it reminds me of a teenager having their first smoke, experiencing the hit of nicotine in their brain. how everything slows down, eventually stops, and something is taken off of a heavy chest. i lick my lips and i can almost taste it. i don’t miss it.

the smoke from her lungs blooms upwards. a wind comes around the corner and cradles the smoke in it’s arm like a mother and takes it away with a smile, like a gift.

“i know what you mean. they’re just clothes. they don’t expect anything from you. you can just read their numbers and know them, but people don’t come with numbers.” i always laugh when i talk like that. when i feel like i’m verbalizing things that should strictly be kept in a written format. that these things can only be ingested along with a narrative and should not just be thrown during casual conversations. i feel foolish so i accompany my words with a breezy laugh to make it seem…less. less of everything.

she just nods. and that’s the end of the conversation. and our break. we get back to work.

in the room of impersonal everythings, i think for a long time about everything personal.

i long to be known, i tell myself. i’m human, i tell myself, even though life aids me in forgetting sometimes. i am just like other people.

she’s older. she’s lived a whole life i haven’t witnessed. and i’m twenty-two. if i take off my glasses, nobody will know i wear them. possibly a quarter of my life has passed, if not less. i have experienced nothing i would like to remember on my deathbed, which means i have to work hard to collect experiences. big or small, i need to hold them in my fist and never let go. i need to put them in my pocket until they grow. like a child, i have to nurse after them— make sure they don’t turn sour as they age. put lotion on them from time to time. i have to make sure they’re grown enough until one day i let them go and they can live on their own in the world, without me. experiences which morph into meanings. meanings that i can leave behind. long after i’m gone. meanings that matter.

if i stay away from humans and sit with clothes all my life starting now, how will i be known? how will i know? how will i remain human and collect experiences and learn what effort is, what it means to know and be known someday. you can’t know a person in a year or two but surely you can create experiences. you can create meaning as you continue to learn people. and i think that’s enough for me. the effort means more to me.

people i meet these days tell me i’m sociable. ha. but even though i don’t feel like i’m functioning properly on the inside, i’m glad i look put-together on the outside now. after being told the same by three people who have nothing to do with each other, i’ve decided to believe it. i believe that the anxiety within can stay held within, that i can absorb it within, that it will not reach out its claws and hurt any experience i build, or any person i put effort into knowing. i refuse to just be something on a hanger or a drawer with a number tag on it, i refuse to be someone who’s only going to read those number tags, forever, so early on in my life. so i choose to believe that i can live different lives on the outside and inside. both of which is me.

and who knows, maybe someday, one day, when the time is right and everything is in place, and i am so deeply in love with myself that i can barely stop from wanting better things for myself, unable to hold myself back anymore, maybe, then, i will see that someone else wishes to know me too. and who knows, maybe, then, they’d want to know me even from within.

and i will be known.

really, it’s time to let myself be. i’ve survived for long enough, it’s time to live. a new year is coming, and i’m never big on resolutions because i’m not resolute. i am easily influenced, i am easily carried away if anything comes close enough to hold me— anything like the wind, or another person. and i sway. there have never been resolutions, and there will never be. but, but, but. i will want this year.

i will want more, and i will be more, and i will let myself live. huri will rest. huri will become a wind that cradles everything with affection. even if it is as fleeting as the smoke, i will hold it between my two arms and i will pull it close and i will love it. with purpose. as a choice. i will love it even if it is fated to disappear. even if temporary, i will create meaning.

i’m just like everyone else. all of us want to be known. so someone has to begin with the knowing. and i will begin this year. i will come out of the launderette and i will be out and i will meet people and they will see me on the outside and think i am put-together. i will love them even if i won’t know them for another day.

people want too much, and people want to be known, and i will begin with knowing them. unafraid of effort, unafraid of the giving, unafraid of the brewing gentle love within me and everyone else that can so easily turn into a monster. and even when it turns into a monster, i will love it relentlessly. i will put lotion on its hands and i will feed it.

i am gentle. i am love. people are gentle. people are love. and i will love people. i will love you.

i will be the wall you can tiredly come to lean your back on, a resting place. you can slide down, hold your head in your hands, and i will hold your back. you don’t have to be anything. you don’t have to do anything. i will love you simply because you are. just as i do with myself. because you and i are people and we want to be known. and i will begin now.

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happy new year to everyone. cheers to experiences, cheers to learning. it’s not the end yet.