Sometimes I forget to shower.
I say forget because its easier than saying "I feel like the act of moving is akin to trying swim in setting plaster while anchored by a steel chain and the clay is clogging up my airways".
I used to like showers. In a way, it felt like drowning. Drowning always felt like the way out - on the too dark days where nothing else made sense except the thought of drowning. Drowning is a fight you can't win. A way to let your body tire and... finally sleep.
But showers never last long enough and sometimes I forget to shower.
And I spend days with spirals of oily hair dropping into my eyeline because they don't stay hinged behind my ear and I try to avoid going near people because I feel disgusting in my own skin - as if waiting to burst. But I go home and I sit in my litter-strewn apartment and stare at dishes I mean to wash but don't before doing something, anything, to ignore what is around me.
And I still "forget" to shower because nobody cares. When you live alone, no one cares enough to check you're okay. That you have food in the fridge. That you have enough teabags. That the plates are clean and neatly stacked. They just assume you are okay when the reality is something different.
The reality is that you can't walk into the corridor when its dark because you're scared there is someone lurking in the shadow. You lie in bed for hours without once closing your eyes. You order food way more than you should and hate yourself after because this is why you're in debt. This and the rent you can't afford but said you could because you didn't want to be a burden.
You let the dishes pile up, the bin left unemptied and bags and plates and containers build a metropolis of unhappiness around you and you get lost in the city you've constructed out of your own despair. But you don't say anything because people like to think you're okay. They like blissful ignorance too much to really pay attention.
They see a canvas in all one colour and miss the details that make it sing.
All they know is that... I forget to shower sometimes.
And they think that's fine because it's me.
