A Fitted Sheet, an Existential Crisis

I was too lazy to take a picture of a sheet, so instead you get some under-the-bridge graffiti I saw on my walk today. [Transcription: "I must put aside the hurt that I know to make room for the peace that is unfamiliar. -Meg."]

You ever make a whole personality centered around being bad at something?

A few months ago, I folded a fitted sheet.

I wasn't even paying attention to what I was doing, really, as I turned one half of the sheet inside out and poked my hands into the corners, sheathing them inside the right-side-out corners, folding them down crisply, smoothing and creasing the cotton once, twice, thrice.

And suddenly before me was a neatly-folded sheet, so flat and tidy that you could not even tell it was fitted.

It gave me an existential crisis.

I had spent all my life being frustrated that I couldn't fold a fitted sheet. I'd made jokes about it, sworn off the technique as witchcraft, balled up the fitted sheets and crammed them into linen closets in dismay, built up an entire part of my personality as the Girl Who Can't Fold Fitted Sheets, LOL I'm Such a Klutz, LOL I'm Not Like Those Boring Adults Who Can Fold Fitted Sheets. I'm too young, too cool, too carefree, too relatable to be one of those people who goes through life completing the impossible.

I'm being a bit facetious, of course, but it really did affect me more than any piece of laundry should. I'm not sure if it's a malady of my generation specifically, or if all generations have felt this way: the pressure to at once know exactly what I'm doing, and to be constantly caught in the relatable struggle of not being able to "adult." If I'm not struggling, I'm not doing it right: either because I should be hustle-hustle-hustling, or because I should have such trouble coping with life that every task is an excruciating executive function disaster. 

Who knows where these ideas even come from, except my own desire to be relatable, to be normal, to only stand out from the crowd is carefully-curated ways (ooh, look at the cool enamel pins on my hat, I'm such a rebel!), to make sure that I'm neither too competent nor too incompetent. I dash out arbitrary lines across reality, and strive subconsciously to stay corralled between them.

I really don't know where I'm going with this thought, except to say that, literally and metaphorically, it's okay to be good at fitting folded sheets. It's okay for something that was hard once to be easy now. It's okay for your personality to snag on things like a twig catching on a rock in a stream, but eventually the stream will push the twig along, and that's okay too. Life is fluid, and it doesn't always have to be a struggle. Happy folding!

~~~