Every morning, my first priority is to shower. My usual routine is to head to the showers right after I wake up. On most days, my floormates have already gone to class, and as I enter the restroom, I love when it is filled with an ambient, cold silence. The restroom itself is by no means remarkable. It is exactly what you would expect in a public men’s restroom. After I walk around the row of sinks, I face four mediocre-looking showers. The floor and walls of the shower are made of white plastic. Usually I glance around, inspecting each shower, seeing which sparkles from a fresh layer of morning shower dew, a sure sign that one of my floormates has showered in this area within the past three or so hours. Unless there are no other options left, I refuse to use an already wet shower. Just like the routine of heading to the showers after I wake up, the second shower from the right remains a constant in my life: every day, it is dry as the Sahara. This shower is always the least used by my floormates. It is by far the cleanest out of the four, yet it stands unchosen, unappreciated, for it is neither the closest shower as one enters the restroom nor the shower at the end, which has beside it a convenient metal rack that can hold clothes, towels, etc. This shower is a point of stability among a blurring, dizzying world filled with complications and change. It is the diamond in the rough. It is the holy ground. There is something unsatisfying about entering an already wet shower. In contrast, there is something glorifying about stepping onto the dry, fruitless land of an unused shower. It is like walking along uncharted territory. The shower is yours, and you have given this shower meaning and significance while the rest of the world left its presence unacknowledged. You stomp on that dry shower and puff up your chest in pride, claiming this small area your territory. You are the first one here, and no one can take that status away from you. A clean shower is just as important as an unused one. No one wants remnants of calcified, old Old Spice. No one wants those clumped curdles of bar soap. Lastly, no one wants those icky strands of hair strewn about like vegetation. A clean shower is a good shower, and a place where one becomes clean should be clean itself.

Sometimes, clearing thoughts that are relative to the self and focusing through a wider, more objective and worldly lens helps me see my path from far above. I can see how I’ve messed up, how I’ve hurt others, how I’ve helped others, how I’ve helped myself without becoming selfish. By seeing the past, I then objectively plan my future. Reflecting on who I am and how I have come to be this way is so much easier without the tide of emotions and struggles that tug at and bend what should be straight, streamlined, and impartial thought. Furthermore, I can search for truth beyond my life. I know that there are certain things that I may never understand, but within the confines of my temporary tomb, I am trying to find things that I may not be able to find through the real world. This all may sound pretentious, but I am genuinely curious. Questions on topics such as human tendencies, psychological impulses, and the grandness of life emerge. By washing myself in nothingness and letting my mind wander and answer questions, I feel both cleaner physically and mentally.

When I am inside the shower, I am dead. Not literally, but I feel like nothing. I feel myself blending into the background, melting into the white walls, and dissipating into the white noise. I bask in and am filled by the rich, substantive nothingness of my environment. Darkness is nothing, the absence of light, yet darkness, like some thing, can fill a room. In the same way, I feel my selfhood, my individuality pushed out of my frame of being, and I am full of nothing. Eventually, I am so replete, topped to the brim, with nothing that the walls of my self are stretched to its limits. I am turgid with nothingness. Finally, I burst, and any shred of my being, down to the very walls that held in the nothingness, disappear. At this point, I have reached a brief state of inexistence.

I don’t like to waste water, but I will stand in front of the shower for a few of seconds, taking in the noise that reverberates across the hard walls of the bathroom and bathing in that one, prolonged sound of water droplets collectively drumming on the walls of the shower.

It is the clean haven for a nitpicky loser like me.

Every morning, my first priority is to shower. My usual routine is to head to the showers right after I wake up. On most days, my floormates have already gone to class, and as I enter the restroom, I love when it is filled with an ambient, cold silence. The restroom itself is by no means remarkable. It is exactly what you would expect in a public men’s restroom. After I walk around the row of sinks, I face four mediocre-looking showers. The floor and walls of the shower are made of white plastic. Usually I glance around, inspecting each shower, seeing which sparkles from a fresh layer of morning shower dew, a sure sign that one of my floormates has showered in this area within the past three or so hours. Unless there are no other options left, I refuse to use an already wet shower. Just like the routine of heading to the showers after I wake up, the second shower from the right remains a constant in my life: every day, it is dry as the Sahara. This shower is always the least used by my floormates. It is by far the cleanest out of the four, yet it stands unchosen, unappreciated, for it is neither the closest shower as one enters the restroom nor the shower at the end, which has beside it a convenient metal rack that can hold clothes, towels, etc. This shower is a point of stability among a blurring, dizzying world filled with complications and change. It is the diamond in the rough. It is the holy ground.

Where did those days go? When did I stop going to those get-togethers? When did I stop going to church? Why can’t I watch kids’ shows with the same enthusiasm as before? When did expectations get so high? As I started growing up, I felt my creeping, onset adulthood tugging apart pieces of my childhood like pieces of playdough. I started realizing that it wasn’t as simple as “adults have their private lives while children have their own private lives.” The divide between “adult” and “child” isn’t so clearly defined. The transition between childhood and adulthood is brutal because, every once in a while, you feel yourself losing a bit of your childish self. You hope to God that you stay within that private, naïve world of children forever, but even as you hope, you feel yourself inevitably growing up. As I got my first C on an assignment in middle school and learned that grades mattered, as I found out that watching Pokémon wasn’t cool anymore, as I switched schools, as I was teased by my friends for being overweight, as I – at eleven years old – learned that my Mom had cancer, as I stole a secret peak of my dad crying alone in the closet to the possibility of my Mom needing chemo, I was slowly forced to grow up and learn. As great as learning is, it sometimes sucks because it’s permanent.

Content with what we considered to be sneak-peaks into adulthood with Cowboy Bebop, we children lived our private lives.