Dish Soap Day
Embracing the unpredictability of life. #MayIWrite — Day 22
Everything can change in an instant. We all know this but it doesn’t seem to make it any less shocking when it happens to us. Letting go of our youthful arrogance which leaves us thinking we can predict the future is a useful turning point. Daunting, but useful.
I remember during the demise of my last serious relationship I had this moment where the realisation of this uncertainty hit me. We had broken up but she hadn’t moved out yet. I thought we were in it for the long haul (though I would have come to my senses before too long as neither of us was genuinely happy). I stood at the kitchen sink about to wash a few dishes and as I pumped the soap onto the dish brush I got this flash of only a couple of weeks before, being at Costco and buying a 3-pack of this new eco dish liquid. She and I had debated getting something else but ended up deciding on that trio — probably because one of them smelled like grapefruit. There hadn’t been much of a dent put in the supply of that first bottle before everything fell apart between us. Barely 2 inches into this bottle of soap and my whole world had completely changed from the moment we decided to buy it. Everything was on its end.
I wasn’t really wallowing anymore so I had the more optimistic perspective of, ‘who *knows* what could be true in my life by the time I get to the end of this bottle!’
There was a sense of possibility in that. Plenty was causing me distress in my life at that point and the idea of using the last pump of soap from this very bottle in a life that was offering me much more, was a hopeful one. When things really got to me, I would think of Dish Soap Day. We can find solace in the strangest things, can’t we.
The dish soap ran out when I was in a much better place indeed, and definitely finding my way to authenticity. I was dating, I felt grounded, and my life felt like my own. It was a very different feel than the day of my epiphany.
The second bottle came and went without much fanfare. Life was just a steady climb away from the misery I’d been living in during bottle number one. Starting the third bottle, however, was another loaded contemplation. Things were on the move again, though not so painfully as before. I couldn’t fathom what would be true in my life by the time the last bottle was done. It turned out it was a doozy. A good kind of doozy, just to be clear.
I never imagined that I would go through a period of time measuring my life in bottles of dish soap.
We really do live in the unknown though. It’s tempting to think we have a handle on things, that we can predict what’s coming, but we can’t. It doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t strong or our wishes aren’t clear; we simply don’t know what we don’t know yet. It’s nice to come to a place where I’m okay with that.
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