Woman and the Shower
The realisation of womanhood encapsulated;
When I was little, about four or five, I used to take showers with my dad.
It was a 70s style shower, nestled into the corner of the bathroom, with a glass door and dark blue tiles. We would sit on the tiny shower floor and play with plastic bath toys. We would pretend to be witches and make potions out of conditioner and soap. There was no shelving, so all of the shampoo and conditioner and soap bottles were kept in a corner on the floor; that to us became a castle, a mystic fort of our kingdom. Sometimes we would create a wild flood scene by sitting on the drain, or there would be a battle between the farm animals and the dinosaurs. We would sit there, in our square meter world and play until the hot water ran out.
I think that is the thing I love the most about my dad; we have the same imagination…rather, I have a fragment of his imagination. We could play for hours, me and dad. I understand it more now, how he found it so easy to lose himself in games with his five year old daughter…as I said, we have the same imagination, and as I’ve grown up I’ve come to terms with how easily my mind can slip between reality and a make-believe universe that is so real to me. It’s a double life act, an existence that is founded in dichotomy, you’re always here, but not really. You can talk to me, but I can never guarantee that I’m not on Mars.
The day that I realised that I was too old to play games in the shower with my dad was, and still remains, the moment that I realised I was growing up. As girls we always expect that moment to be the first period, or when we lose our virginity or need our first wire bra…for me it was when my dad and I came back from lying in the gutters during a storm (my childhood was very nature orientated) and naturally, without a thought, went our seperate ways to shower. I would have been no older than six and no younger than five. I sat there, water spluttering from the faucet and realised that growing up had just started. From then on all of the boys that I’d shower with would never want to play games with plastic bath toys, they would just want to have sex.
Don’t think that I never tried to recreate the games in the shower, I did, over and over again; but the older I grew, the less fantastical they became. I could never recreate that alternate reality by myself. My shower games eventuated into sitting on the blue tiles and thinking about being sucked down the drain, staring off into nothing, if I was lucky a race would occur with the drops of condensation down the glass door.
I discovered many things about my womanhood in the shower, but looking back now, really I discovered more about manhood. When I was sixteen, my boyfriend smashed my head into the wall of his shower, because I didn’t want to have sex with him. After that, for a little while, I washed in the bath. When I had my first shower after that incident, my dad sat on the other side of the bathroom door until I turned the the taps off. Once the world see’s you as a woman, it starts treating you differently.
But to my dad I’ll never be a woman, I’ll just be his daughter.
About the Creator
Alyssia Balbi
Hey, I am Australian and I am around 22 years old...I love to write, on my deck, with a cup of tea...this is just my being really, I am sure you will not judge. Thank you for coming here.
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