I stand in the shower utterly hopeless, drained of any positivity in my mind and my heart. It’s the type of despair that makes you question who’s looking back at you in the mirror and why it isn’t a gaunt, black-eyed imposter, but someone who resembles the person you used to know so well. This was a regular beginning to an average day as a gambling addict. The voice in my head pleaded, this needs to stop, I need to change. Contrarily, I carry on stumbling through the days, almost looking forward to the moments of clarity in the bathroom; there would be plenty more before I stopped.
Why didn’t I trust myself?
Perhaps trust wasn’t on the table. If that person was so wise, why had he led me down this route in the first place? Surely he could have predicted this scenario from the beginning, spotting the signs of dependence, but instead he stayed quiet and watched me go further into oblivion. This person didn’t have the answers to the questions life kept asking, and it was tiresome to listen to such speculative pep talk.
In the relationship between the mind and the body, sometimes toxicity creates a divide; it’s important that, despite the difficulties in harmony, a balance is found in listening to the needs of both. The mind and body and intertwined for life, even when the disparity is strong enough for one to lose the other. When the mind is tired or stressed, the body feels the comforting embrace of a hug; the refreshing wind’s breeze on hot cheeks; the deep, calming breaths after tears.
When it comes to listening to the intuitions, it’s not always a straight forward process. In my experience, the part of me that stood up and cried out for change got ignored for a long time; it was a blessing that he didn’t go away. He was persistent in his search for a better life and the setbacks didn’t deter him from reaching out. In the shower almost every morning he would be there, he was the constant that led to change. His determination, my determination, meant that life could get better. It’s yet to be seen if the gambler has equal resolve; does the gambler flee when met with strength and defiance to his charm? Or does he linger, leaching off the moments of misery life will always bring? I’ll tell you one thing, he rarely turns up in the shower so I don’t think he’s here to stay.
I showered as a kid, pretty much every day as I grew up from a teenager through to my adult life. Those moments of reflection were shared only by me and my myself throughout those years, and we remember a lot. The start of high school, where I was nervous that I wouldn’t make friends or the football team. The days my voice started to break and my body began to change, the confusion, the embarrassment; all in the shower. The times I’d get angry or sad or overwhelmed, and the times I’d feel such deep longing for something that would never be there. All in the shower. In the shower at university, I sat down and cried because of stress and the anxiety, and the stupidity of such regular procrastination. Something about the warmth of water on my neck has always comforted me and helped me reflect, breathe and understand myself a little closer.
In the same way that the shower seems to have become an obscure mechanism of self-revival, a long walk can do the same trick. The association between a past and present self in the same context can have powerful reflective qualities. Perhaps people experience this when revisiting a town they grew up in, or staying in a family home where they slept as a child.
By straying far from what the younger self envisioned, the opportunity to rediscover oneself becomes apparent when met with the same context where feelings were once so visceral. Sometimes this may be traumatic and people would prefer to bury the old version of themselves, or their past situations, deep in the place they found them. In cases like my own, having something ever-present to measure change and to hold my direction accountable has been important in saving me from the clutches of addiction. I’m not saying the shower saved me, but in a strange analogous way it kept my mind afloat when I was sinking deeper.
In the same way that life is so persistent in its outpouring of devastation, challenge, and opportunity, the shower can only be equally so for as long as it is kept switched on. It can be hot, cold, or somewhere in between, and the only way to judge it is by standing in it, feeling it, and listening to how your body and your mind reacts.
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