by Allison Lee
I don’t get much time to think during the day. When I speak of ‘thinking’ I don’t mean surface-level thinking; I mean thinking with the heart. My days are mostly swamped with tasks and boxes to check, work and projects, running somebody else’s errands, easing somebody else’s life. My brain thrives on turbo mode, but I’d rather it not.
I long for alone time. Ache for it, even. Not just to be physically isolated from the world, but mentally. To be able to think freely without restrictions, to hand the reins over to the parts of me I cannot hold.
Hot showers are a luxury that not many recognize. It is a heavenly garden one can disappear into for what seems like hours but is only minutes. It’s a couple of square inches in which we can be contained to let slip our thoughts.
Turning the faucet on doesn’t only welcome the waters from above, it turns the world off withal. When the dripping of the shower comes on, I stop hearing the rest of the world. Odd, how deafening a droplet can be once multiplied by tens of thousands, if not millions. The noises beyond the bathroom get drowned out and for a split moment, I don’t hear the cries of children, the screams of the innocent, the gasps of victims, the pleas of refugees, or the static from the disappointing evening news. The water is so loud that it muffles the beating of my own heart, all chambers filled with the same pain in response to humanity’s cruelty.
Standing under the running water, warped by steam, warmth fills me from the inside. I let myself forget the cold of the world, the icy veins of politicians’ promises, the frozen tight-lips printed on dollar bills, and the frigid future that awaits us. I watch the water roll off my skin and find myself wishing for all the world’s problems to do the same; roll off a slope and be drained, never surface again.
I rinse myself one too many times to get rid of the dirt underneath my nails from clawing at closed doors, to relieve my hands of accidental pen marks from writing too much, to wash away the imprints of my mistakes from naivety and nonchalance, to cleanse my head of all the heavy thoughts of noon.
Under the scalding water, skin patches redden and mirrors fog. Feelings become aware and intense. Lines blur. The world does not exist outside of this shower and I will not be bothered by it. It’s something akin to dancing in the rain, but not quite. Equally cathartic perhaps, but not as liberating. After all, who screams their grievances at the world from the shower?
Perhaps I’ll be the first?
Daydream snaps like a twig and reality fixes itself back onto my spine when I turn the water off. And as the towel slithers around my body, the comfort I had ten gallons ago is then expelled from me.