Why Are You Still Folding Laundry When You’re Already Gone?

By Buff

Label: Existential Assessment
Posted in: The Observation Deck

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Case Subject:
The Citizen. Any citizen. All citizens. You.

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Observed Behavior:

• Citizen continues to complete repetitive domestic rituals
• Facial expression: neutral to distant
• Fold, stack, sigh
• Fold, stack, sigh
• Subject appears to be somewhere else mentally
• But still folds the shirt anyway

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Hypothesis:
Subject may believe that visible routine = emotional survival.
Subject may be emotionally absent but performatively present.
Subject may have already spiritually exited but forgotten to tell their hands.

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Assessment Question:

“Why are you still folding laundry
when you’re already gone?”

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Follow-Up Indicators:

• Subject pauses.
• Looks at the laundry.
• May laugh. May cry. May fold faster.
• May stop folding for the first time in months
  and just… sit there.

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Conclusion:
Unclear.
Subject’s response is nonverbal.
Observation continues.

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Assessment Complete.
Filed under “Domestic Dissociation” and “The Illusion of Functionality.”
Time of filing: Irrelevant. Time is symbolic.

– Buff,
Existential Assessment Officer, Republic Division of Internal Confusion