A friend, B, that I hadn't talked to in a while called me today. I am lucky to have her in my life - she was one of two people who engaged with my abusive partner, W, and told me that how he treated me was wrong. She insisted I had to get out. It took several months for me to come around to it, which was helped along by the fact that W hated social situations and outings with the kids, so I had a lot of time without him to consider my experience of the kids, community, connections, without him.

Is your house still a mess, she asked? Yes, I replied. She asked why, and I said, I don't know. Because I am triggered by household duties, as this was an area that W would be deeply critical towards, and could be irascibly reactive because of. I remember being very tired - making dinner, putting the kids to bed, doing the dishes, and then having to accompany him at his request as he watched shows of his choosing. Sometimes I would stay up and fold clothes. It never seemed to end, the laundry, and I had no help with it.

If I thought about it, I continued, it probably would be because of my mother's messages. That I was messy and lazy, and disorganized. And that's not all of it, I told her, but I feel like I am getting close to finding the next clue. Inwardly, I thought of laundry.

I'm going back to that thought now. I am messy and lazy and disorganized, or at least I still believe it. B helpfully supplied, you're an artist, you are so good at play. I wish I could play like you. I haven't re-written the part of my script, away from being cast as the harlot, the princess, the invalid. I am creative with a fluidity between instinct and logic. I see possibilities and not limitations. And I don't mind being wrong.

I can't help but return to laundry. Who was the first person to make me feel bad about how I dressed? My mother. At church, at elementary school age, she insisted I wear dresses. But how was I to play on the playground then? I wore shorts underneath. We brokered an agreement - one week out of the month I could wear jeans. In my teenage years there were rules about spaghetti straps - the rule was absolutely not. My uncle would tease me relentlessly (he had a theme song for the overweight kids' activity club that he would belt whenever we visited my mother's side of the family), and my dad mentioned that I should have more activity and eat less from time to time. And I suppose, more than anything, I felt fat. My mother and I... didn't talk about the female body. She caught me straddling a pillow in my early elementary school years and told me never to do that - I don't think I have ever felt more shame. Of course I didn't stop, I just felt really bad about it when I did it, especially as a self-soothing measure if I was too anxious to sleep. I spent a lot of my life feeling like I was a terrible person.

As a young adult, I picked clothes that I liked. I learned enough about make-up to feel attractive. After getting pregnant (and married), I resumed my tenuous relationship with clothes - nothing ever fit right, and as I became pregnant again (and again), it was a source of irritation for me. W had a lot to say about the way I dressed, mainly that it was below expectations. When we moved from South East Asia to America, the revolving seasonal clothing (along with the additional humans that came with additional laundry) added to the pile of reasons for my laundry-loathing. The eating disorder probably didn't help too. I suppose, to be frank, there have been significant periods of my life where my self-image was woefully low, and they both coincided with sharing a house with first, my mother, and then my husband W.