Apricot Scrub and Life

Apricot Scrub and Life - luminouscrescent

I tiptoe into my parents' dark bathroom, groping for my mother's body scrub. I like its mild apricot scent and oddly comforting rough texture, and I really want to use it tonight. I think she'd allow me to use it, but I already take too many of her things - it makes me feel guilty. 

As soon as I grasp the cold plastic bottle in my hand, I rush to my bathroom, turn on the lights, and look back to make sure nobody sees me. I hastily squeeze some of the bottle's contents into my empty soapdish - an unintentionally huge swirled blob of beige, flecked with minuscule red crystals. My mom always chides me for using excessive amounts of shampoo, but this?

 I think I should quickly finish that up before she finds out.

Anyway, I want today's shower to be as nice as possible - I think I deserve it. Today was an irritatingly tiring day - tiring enough to earn a two-hour bath - but unfortunately, the planet's water is nearly finished, and I don't want my kids to die of thirst in the future, so I make the noble decision of taking a 15-minute shower.

I sit on the toilet seat, thinking about the massive pile of homework that waits for me on my desk as I use the wiper to reach the shower knob, turn it on, and push it to the left. Hopefully, by the time I've relieved myself, the water will be warm. Even after a sweltering day, I will never use cold water. It causes all my muscles to seize up (not that I have many), and it makes me shiver, even on the hottest of days.

When I'm ready, I stand up and quite literally jump into the shower, getting myself uncomfortably tingly. This way, despite its temperature, I don't have to hesitate and waste clean water. 

Saving the planet makes me feel good about myself. It's one of the few things I do that make me proud even without receiving validation.

As I look up (something I do instinctively to see how fast the water's coming down), I see the shower water not as it is, but as a reflection of me - falling with graceful urgency and shattering as soon as it hits an obstacle. 

I'm feeling pretty poetic today, I think.

The water splatters against my sweat-beaded skin, unusually frigid; that's weird. Our geyser is on the roof, where most of the sunlight hits, so the water should be hot. I turn the knob further to the left and start imagining my 'happy sadness' Spotify playlist in my head. I would sing in the shower, but I know that my younger siblings will hear me and either mimic me or turn off the bathroom lights from the outside.

They also sing in the shower, but I let them. I feel like everyone needs their own moments, and I let my siblings have them whenever they can. But that doesn't mean they aren't hypocrites.

Gooseflesh appears on my skin as I shudder, taking in the piercing coldness of the water. Slowly, I get used to the temperature, and I grin. What I'm doing is laughable - singing songs in my head, thinking with a brain that has thoughts too complex to be mine, scrubbing on a piece of stolen comfort.

A rather lovely song from the Folklore album starts playing in my make-believe headphones, and I close my eyes, savouring the moment. This is my happy place.

But I wonder why it can't last.

I wonder why everything is so bad all the time. Why I feel sad before I feel happy. Why bitter comes before sweet, and most of all, what this beautifully brutal place called life actually is.

I have almost escaped to my fantasy getaway world when the water finally gets lukewarm. Before I can give out a sigh of relief, it gets warmer. And warmer. Hotter. Blisteringly hotter. The water turns thick, and I my intestines are being aggressively tugged and braided by an evil hairstylist. I also think that my heart is going to explode. I open my eyes, and this time, I don't even have to look up to see my reflection.

I see red. Red, flecked with minuscule beige crystals. Red, engulfing my eye sockets as soon as I open them. Red, invading my brain.

Red, taking over.

It doesn't smell like apricots, and it isn't comfortingly rough. It's a bitter, metallic-tasting waterfall, falling down with the gravity of Jupiter.

I could call for help, I think. I could scream. I could holler. I could plead. But those thoughts are pushed aside as something settles in me, something that stops me from doing anything.

This wet, white-tiled room is my world.

The water, common anywhere yet irreplaceable everywhere, is my reflection.

The pair of invisible headphones resting on my sodden hair is my haven - a sacred, precious haven.

This shower is my lifespan - I can live for much longer, but it would require sacrifices that I am forever unwilling to give.

The apricot scrub is a stolen comfort and an earned token of guilt - something that is deserved and forbidden at all the wrong and right times.

And this moment, this is bliss, and this is misery.

This is a realization everybody must have in order to live. Not to survive, but to live.

Because this very moment?

This is life, and I must let it go on.