I know this is gonna sound real stupid and small but like, my older brothers found me sobbing over a laundry commercial last night. I mean REALLY sobbing, like the kind where your nose gets stuffy and your throat burns and you can’t catch your breath. It was for some new fabric softener or something, and the commercial was all about a mom folding clothes for her kids and the sun was shining through the window and it just looked so… soft. Like everything was soft and warm and easy. And I was sitting there, folding my own pile of like, three shirts and two pairs of jeans that needed to last the rest of the week because payday is still ages away, and my own clothes felt stiff and kinda scratchy, like cardboard. My hands were red from the cold water, cause our machine is kinda old and the hot water takes forever, and suddenly it just all piled up. The scratchy clothes, the cold water, the empty fridge, the way my stomach always feels a little bit hollow even after dinner. It just all just felt… rough. Like sandpaper on everything. And then my brothers walked in from the living room, probably to grab another bag of chips or whatever, and they saw me. Just sitting there, on the floor, leaking all over myself because of some stupid commercial about fresh sheets. They didn’t even say anything at first, just stopped in the doorway with their mouths open, like they’d seen a ghost or something. Then Mark, the older one, he started laughing. Not a mean laugh, just like, a shocked, can’t-believe-this kinda laugh. And Kevin, he just went, “Dude, are you CRYING? Over… laundry?” And then they both just exploded. Like full-on belly laughs, falling all over each other, pointing at me. And I just wanted to disappear. Like, melt into the floorboards and never come back up. The shame was so hot, I felt it burning my cheeks even more than the crying had. It was like they could see all the rough edges inside me, all the stuff that felt scratchy and worn out, and they were laughing at it. I just grabbed my shirts and ran to my room and slammed the door. And I could still hear them, muffling their laughs, trying to pretend they weren’t still talking about it. Like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. And it probably was. It *is* stupid. I know it’s stupid. But it felt like the whole world was just too much, like a big heavy blanket made of itchy wool, and I just couldn’t breathe under it anymore. And then to have them see me like that… just feels like another thing that’s gonna stick, another thing they’ll bring up years from now when I’m trying to act like a normal person. Like a stain that just won’t come out, no matter how many times you wash it.