It All Comes Out In The Wash…
The above expression is one that my mother used to use all of the time, only while doing the laundry.
As a kid, I never fully understood the expression fully until now, and I doubt that my mother understood
It in a way that I am about to impart.
My initially understanding, which I think that my mother understood of the phrase, was that all of our secrets
are revealed when the laundry gets done.
Who is the first person other than yourself that knows when you’ve gone through puberty and started having wet dreams?
Who is The first person other than yourself that knows when you’ve had your first menstrual period?
Who knows how many times you wet or soiled the bed?
Who knows if you’ve slept with someone else in your bed, or have been cheating?
It’s the person who did your laundry as a kid.
In that sense, you can not really hide any secrets when the evidence is left on your sheets,
and it was my mother who knew all of this stuff, having to endure it all.
Yes, that was a bit vulgar, but I haven’t finished yet.
Deeper Meaning
Before I get to explaining what I think the deeper meaning of the title phrase means, at least to me, I need to provide a little background explanation as to why I now think this way.
The first week of the new year brought with it the news of he passing away of the friend I have mentioned a few times on this blog previously. This will be the last time I will mention here on my blog as I need to move on with my life.
I was informed by a mutual friend of her passing and we discussed a few things and this was the start of the truth coming out. It turned out that she’d cheated on a long term partner that I had no idea about, nor did my friend.
He wasn’t mentioned online at any point in her social media. He lives in the USA and had flown here twice.
The guy that she was cheating with for the last 5 months was lead to believe that she was going to marry him, but she’d told me that she would never ever get married.
This was the first of many lies that got revealed when, I had typed “Rest In Peace, [her name]” on one of her Instagram reels which was seen by the guy from the USA amd he got in contact with me. It turned out it was her family that was deleting her Instagram account while we were typing. We continued to reveal what we each knew via direct messages.
I’d initially been told that she’d passed away her sleep. This wasn’t exactly the case. When I asked about whether there was a funeral notice, I was told that they don’t print the deaths of suicides here in Australia.
Suicide?!
I knew she struggled with depression (It took me a year of studying psychology to discover she was a borderline, rather than a covert narcissist I had originally suspected, but more on that later) took medication for it and I knew she’d been given sleeping medication to help with with insomnia. I also knew that there was a point where she would get drunk enough to black out and wake up in her bed the next day without any memory of the night before.
I thought she’d been sober for a while. I was wrong and she was good at pretending to be sober and functional.
The toxicology report showed an overdose of pills and alcohol.
She’d also told me she was being beaten by her ex but that she also had a “fuck buddy”. These two men turned out to be the same guy, her recently ex partner of 12 years. I knew that the time lines didn’t match. She wasn’t being beaten either.
What was happening was that she was getting blackout drunk, fall over and blame the bruises on her ex partner.
For those that knew me a few years ago will know how devastating thinking she was being beaten had been on me.
Now I have to shift perception of her ex from being an abuser to being a genuinely supportive human being who tolerated her nonsense for 12 years.
When she passed away, the police held her phone for evidence until the coroner could determine the cause of death.
The family got access to her Instagram accounts, TikTok accounts and other accounts where she lead multiple lives and held multiple secrets.
Her life was a tragedy, riddled with self trashing behaviours caused by a traumatic event in her childhood.
Right now I am slowly putting pieces of the puzzle together. Stray bits of conversation and pockets of truth surface
in my mind as I begin to process it all.
She boasted about buying her own home, but it turns out her parents had taken out a mortgage for her. Her elderly parents. My guess is they’ll probably sell it and move her stuff out perhaps? I don’t know, I am not known to her family directly just via the guy messaging me on Instagram.
I also to have to reconcile within my own mind how toxic and abusive the whole experience has been for me, and to truly cherish those who are genuinely my friends and not those who pretend for convenience sake. She manipulated me, betrayed me, lied to me and lied to others. Ultimately her whole life was both shallow and hollow.
In Conclusion
In the end, it all comes out in the wash. “The wash” I think was a subtle reference to Christian baptism a long time ago perhaps, and there are dictionary definitions that say that it means that there was no harm done or that the truth comes out eventually.
Either way, your secrets won’t stay hidden. Someone will talk. Someone is always paying attention and ultimately all that is hidden will come to light eventually. Maybe not until after you pass away, but people discover stuff all the time.
In general Inthink that the more genuine and honest with our intent towards others, and if we truly listen to the quiet little voice inside our heads (our true authentic selves, not the louder monologue tainted by the voices of others), we know what’s right and wrong and we know the best course of action while in solitude.
In the end, when this physical form is gone and our belongings are divided up by scavengers and those mentioned in our wills and our internet presence is removed by family members, all that remains are the memories that people create from encounters and experiences with us.
Try to make each one count in a positive light. Be kind to yourself (physically, mentally, spiritually, financially, etc.).
Thank you for reading.
Until next time,
ShaidonAll content, including photos and text, are produced by myself except where indicated otherwise and sources are always supplied. I do not use A.I. so your upvotes support a genuine human being producing original material.