To help me endure the summer heat, when I get home from either tennis, surfing or a run on the beach, the first thing I like to do is jump into a luke warm-to-cool shower with the lights off. The sun is always beaming in through my window and occasionally I’ll light a candle or two from Red Flower for some mood enhancing aromas. There is something so refreshing and calming about a shower in a sunlit room, the water sprays gently on your face, cooling you from the day’s heat-filled activities. It’s as though you’re the cooked brownie waiting for your scoop of vanilla ice cream to melt around you, drenching you in decadence.

These showers have always been one of my little pleasures, something simple, but profound in it’s effect on  my well-being, much like getting 50% off a Stella McCartney blazer. But it’s funny how things change. One minute you’re in bliss and the next, i.e. one bad relationship later, all you can think about as you turn the faucet from the red to the blue bar is how he used to prefer showering with the lights off because his eyes were tired by the end of the day. You start thinking about his L’Occintaine  soaps and finicky drain, even the huge linen colored towels creep back into your memory, wary like kid stealing a bar of candy from the counter. And then you’re fucked.  Your ex wins again and of course this fact propels you even further into madness because the idea that he still manages to get under your skin and squelch any bit of happiness you might have is infuriating.

I used to be so good at letting things go. I suppose the ability to bounce back subsides with age. Your mistakes are no longer lessons, but life long regrets. Gone are the days of simple showers and ice cream laced brownies for dinner. Now life is filled with pensivity; every moment that you have to yourself is one filled with thoughts running through your head: Did I remember to pay my phone bill? Do I have time to go to the gym AND make the cocktail reception? Eeeck, when was the last time I spoke to Michelle? Why does he feel the need to share our business with people who are total strangers to me? Does she think she’s fooling anyone about how she droped 4 dress sizes in 3 months? How many more apartments do I have to look at before I find one that’s livable? Does it really cost $1,400 for a studio on 110th Street?!

Both poignent and child-like rambles take up the little blank spots in my thoughts now that the carefree days of my youth are gone. And it seems that no matter how much I try to let go of the past, it keeps splashing back in my face…it turns out that in your twenties, its not so easy to wash off dirt anymore.