Lélia Loison
Lélia Loison is a French writer in the making and a curator in the field of live music. She lives and tries to work in Paris, from one experimental gig to another. https://www.instagram.com/lelialoison/
I hate washing dishes. I remember the dishes I’ve washed in other people’s places, for love. I remember the sink, I remember the utensils they had, those that I liked, those that annoyed me. I remember the slouchy forks like I remember the shitty friends: things that I had to bear to be there. Hills to climb on the road, obstacles to go around. I like solving problems, but I never liked washing dishes. People laugh about how much I hate washing dishes. They say I like to lie down. They laugh about my laziness. They don’t know. How much it take me to get up sometimes? My plague is invisible. It’s the rhythm of my days. It’s the tolerance to pain I’ve developed. When the doctor says, « it’s gonna sting a little », I already know that it’s not going to. I’ve grown accustomed to a level of pain that I hide from the world, because this is what you’re asked to do when you have a disease that is a laughing matter. So I carry it with me as this almost-secret. Rarely mentioned, often brushed aside. Cause that’s what’s expected of me. Getting up, washing dishes. Getting up, going to work. I’m supposed to be efficient in the same way. Hide your pain and do the dishes. Hide your pain and stand at your desk eight hours a day. After all, that’s why they gave us equal job opportunities, not so we’d annoy them with our « specificities ». Our girl-oriented diseases, undiagnosed, uncared for, shadowed by centuries of unbothered male medicals. So I wash the dishes, I stand at the desk, and I wonder, from mind to body, what will give in first.
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