Emotional Laundry - A Letter to the High School Cafeteria

I wander through classrooms, friend’s houses, and third spaces in a white T-shirt. I am my own dead giveaway: you can tell what I’m thinking just by looking at me. Most of the time, that’s not a problem. I’m fairly agreeable. I ask how my friend’s days are, I forget the people who hurt me, and I am untainted: fresh-eyed and forgiving. And when an experience does stain, I’ve learned to wash it. Red stains are easily rinsed off with conversation mint tea over the affected area; blue stains shrink if placed in a warm bath. Green, however, does not wash off as easily. 

There was a strange synergy between me and the whole world when I wore my green-stained t-shirt. My every action felt like a point of comparison. I watched my steps, my breath, and my tone when I talked to my new friends. The whole new worldI  built a whole new semester felt artificial. like it was a museum display, not real life. In those moments, disquiet air puddled the feet between my green-stained t-shirt and the green paint. The distance between the painters - them - and the green - me - felt almost tangible. My focus tiptoed between the person I was talking to and the people I was hoping would overhear. Sometimes, I still have to pretend to be immersed in the world of this side of the cafeteria. Everyone knows I am pretending. The painter, not pretending, is too immersed in an indifferent chatter to notice. 

I didn’t even notice my green stain at first. I was much more absorbed by the red—how dare you—and the blue—what am I supposed to do now? Somehow, I mustered up enough healthy strategies to fade those feelings. Green stained.

I'm not sure how to get rid of green stains. While I carry other reminders - angry phone calls, bittersweet goodbyes - those are easy to eliminate because they represent an outward expression. They are a reflection of someone else, not an internal struggle. Envy is a dissatisfaction with oneself and a desire to morph into another. I’m envious of these green painters who now possess a world I’ve lost, not jealous, because jealousy requires an underlying urge to take it away from them, and without them, that world wouldn’t have existed at all. 

 I am not envious of them, per se: I am envious that they possess those little bits of my life. Green is more of a placeholder. It appeared in place of the stolen life for me and was distributed evenly between the people I hope will overhear me in the cafeteria. I exist artificially for those unsuspecting museum visitors who sometimes peer in my direction. 

I've been here before. For some reason, a longing to have something we don’t settle in deeper to all of us than anything else does. There is some unforgiving survival instinct to pay extra attention to something someone else possesses that we don’t. We stalk someone's exes long after we stop stalking them, we remember the things we didn't have - the newest fashion trend, after every conversation. But some envy, like green cafeteria paint, is dangerous. It makes my life feel artificial.

Wash, dry, and repeat. Removing green stains is hard but not entirely impossible. I've been here before. First, we wash; we dip ourselves into new experiences to forget the old. At first, everything I did fulfilled this purpose. I was trying to make up for something lost. To an extent, this works. A new world took over my attention, so that I didn't notice how long the stain took to fade. Then dry; we expose the envy to the outside world, hoping the elements will take care of it. And then repeat. I’ve learned that everything fades with time. 

I'm no longer envious of the world I had before. I barely even think about it, mostly. Mostly, I'm interested enough in my new world not to be pretending. Most of the time, I am pretty clean. But it's hard to let go of green paint chips at the end of high school. Sometimes, washing dry and repeating isn't enough: we need bleach. If I were to have real closure, now would be the time. I still have so much left to say. Alternatively, I could just wait this one out. At what point are the friendships we had worthy of envy? Green stains are tricky because mint teas and warm baths don't answer that question.