I stood in the doorway of the utility room and felt an unreasonable amount of despair

Dear Delyara, There they were. Damp, slumped, half-drying, one on the hook, one on the floor, one somehow over the banister, as if towels in this house have their own private religion against being hung up properly. Nothing terrible had happened. And yet I stood there feeling as if those towels represented every repetitive domestic truth I was too tired to negotiate with grace. The same reminders. The same follow-up. The same jobs regenerating themselves as fast as I complete them. I know towels are not a tragedy. I also know they can become the exact object that catches all the emotional static of a person who has spent too long being responsible in all the unpraised ways. I hung them up. The despair passed. The point remained.