Self Care

(CW: Mental Health, Self Harm, Gore)

The water down my back begins to run cold. My fingers pruned, my back hunched, a mop of hair falls into every corner of my vision. The cheap coconut conditioner is cold and fragrant.

I hear banging on the bathroom door.

“Hurry it up in there.”

It’s my voice. The brightness in tone had faded with time. The dwindling years on my mind, there would be no patience. Not for anyone. Especially me.

Two knocks punctuate the voice of my older self.

“Hurry. Up.”

I never understood why I decided to be roommates with myself. We each hated it. We hated each other. The worst parts of ourselves were reflected infinitely, like two parallel mirrors. Only the reflections can leave a sink of soiled dishes.

My hair is a brown matted net. The water running down my back is cold now. I turn the metal handle with my foot and the room falls silent. Like a secluded cave, moist, and lifeless, I run my burning fingers through hair made of steel wool. Like a tangled slinky, like a hastily stored set of Christmas lights, I begin to unfurl.

I am waiting outside the bathroom to use the shower. My hair is silver. It is shoulder-length wet. It curls into a rounded puff. Defying gravity, it adds inches to my height. I don’t know why I spent years with it so long. It was so much work. It ate away hours. It got in the way. I am happy with where I am and comfortable with a quick 2-in-one conditioner. But a sadness weighs on me. The younger ones tell me I should cheer up.

They don’t know the half of it.

The scars.

The aches.

The unyielding sense of disappointment. It’s their fault I am like this. I don’t know why I agreed to live with them in the first place.

I am furiously pounding on the door. But I don’t listen. I am shrieking. I sound like my parents. I hate that I sound like my parents. I know the younger me likes it less. But I don’t care. Not Like I used to.

I ignore the frantic screams outside the bathroom. I feel a sense of pity, but I am used to it. It is still my turn in the shower. I work the conditioner through my hair. It burns my scalp. A defined sear across the back of my head. It’s not supposed to do that. I’m not supposed to have a wound there either, but it’s better than it used to be.

In the bedroom over, I lay in bed. My hands are buried in the mess of hair. I am younger. I dig. I scrape. I pick. I tear. There’s a mole on the back of my head. Only I know about it. Well, I suppose the rest of my roommates know about it too. It is raw. I have never seen it behind the veil of hair, but I know it is bright red, the size of a peanut, a consistent nuisance that only I can feel. Nobody else believes me.

I need to sleep.

Why can’t I sleep?

I want to die.

I don’t want to be here.

My scalp oozes. My fingers are red. I keep digging.

I am even younger. A child. I got out of the shower and went to school all by myself. I am in gym class now. Hair pokes out of my head like toothbrush bristles. I am running around the gym, and it reeks of old wood polish, or wax, or whatever they used. I am behind the other children. I am falling faster behind. Breathing harder, muscles aching; I sweat. The kids are smiling and laughing. I try to catch up to them. The sweat bleeds from my scalp, it smells like coconut. I want to show them, but the burning in my lungs keeps me behind.

I am off work. I am a young adult. My hair had been restrained in a tight bun for countless days. It had never been this long before. I have to drive to Oregon for Thanksgiving dinner. I will drive alone. I will wear the clothes of my dead uncle. I will leave my partner behind. My family can’t know I am queer. Not yet. But first, I will let my hair down. I will wash it. It shouldn’t take long.

I approach the bathroom. The oldest of us is still waiting outside. I am not waiting. I am already in the shower. But my hair had been neglected for weeks, maybe months. I have to drive to Oregon in a few hours. I force the bathroom door open.

“I’m still in here,” I say frustrated. I wish my roommates would let me shower in peace.

But I was angry when I was younger. I forgive myself for that.

I am off work, I am younger. I have to be in Oregon in a few short hours. I rip away the curtain exposing a hunched creature with fingers blindly feeling through hair. I lift my naked body out of the shower and drop me on the cold toilet.

“I have to be in Oregon,” I say to myself.

“I know,” I reply from the toilet. Cold, wet, and naked I grab my phone to distract myself as I wait.

I rip away my work uniform and jump in the shower. I try to wash my hair. It is the worst it’s ever been. None of us remember how long it was. The years of growth are torn out in handfuls. Hours pass. I arrive at Thanksgiving dinner late and my hair is still tangled.

Now that I left for Oregon, I got off the toilet and back into the shower.

I methodically work out snags and matted strands. I slowly weave the conditioner between every hair. The strands cut against wrinkled, drenched skin. My fingers accumulate strands like a brush that feels pain. Each swipe of the hand gets caught. Each strand slices skin like razor wire. This will take a while, there is no telling how long.

I get back from Oregon. I am at a specialist. He cringes at the sight of my hands. I have tried everything. He gives me two prescriptions to grow the skin back and keep it:

A steroid ointment.

A career change.

I go to work. My job matters. We are in the middle of a pandemic. People are quitting faster than we can hire. The water is boiling, but I don’t care. My bare hands plunge into the water. There is no one left to do the work. If I am not helping others, I have no other reason to exist.

I don’t work that job anymore. I am older. I am in the shower. I rub my hands together, balling up the accumulated broken strands. The ball of hair is almost cute.

At school, the class works on self-portraits. I am young. I am a child. I excitedly ask the teacher if I can use my own hair. My older self, with a gray poof, gives me a trim. I bring a plastic bag of my hair and glue it to my self-portrait.

My classmates are repulsed.

They think it’s disgusting.

They think I am disgusting.

I am an adult. I am still in the shower. I don’t know how long it has been. But it has been a while. I am shivering. Heat evaporates out of my body. My back is sore from hunching over. I turn the water on in hopes of heat returning. Scalding water dapples my back.

I jump forward.

I slip.

My body impacts. My saturated hair slaps against the wall sponging my face and coating it with cheap coconut. I yelp. I stay on the floor of the shower.

I am in the kitchen. I am older but still young. I portion a batch of beans into reusable plastic lunch containers.

I love beans. I smile.

I hear a thump from the bathroom. I must have fallen in there. The beans can wait.

I approach the bathroom. I see myself with grey hair and arms crossed waiting outside.

“Am I okay in there?” I ask my older self.

“Why don’t you ask the pill farm you’ve been seeing,” I say to my younger self sardonically.

I really do sound like my parents.

“I’m trying.” I tell my older self, “You don’t have to make it harder.”

“You know, I might just leave altogether,” I say to my younger self. “You’re just going to mess it up again.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” I retort to my older self.

Each of myself hears a cry in the bathroom.

It’s me I am younger.

I ignore the jabs of my oldest self and enter the bathroom.

I am on the floor of the shower. Scalding water burning my skin, I let it burn me. I stay down.

I approach myself in the shower. I help myself up. I set the shower to a comfortable temperature. I begin to help myself untangle.

Eventually, between the two of me, hands run cleanly through. It’s encouraging. The next pass gets caught again, but I continue to gently work out the tangles. Each pass of fingers glides with greater ease. The coconut is light and fluffy as it permeates each curl. I am almost done. At least for now.

There used to be color in my hair. Then there used to be bleached strands. It had all been torn out over the years. I never got it cut. It used to be down at my ankles. After years of neglect, despite consistent growth, half was left. It is a length I will cherish and nurture.

I rinse. The individual curls spring freely across my shoulders and down my back. I am smiling.

I wrap myself in a towel and leave the bathroom. The oldest was no longer outside. I must have moved out. I wonder if someone else is going to move in. I let the thought pass, I did have beans to make after all.