A Love Letter To My Shower

Dear my new shower,

I love you.

No, really. I love you. And I’ve never said that to any other shower before – I swear. For most of my life, showers have been annoying, temperamental, and more or less an obligation I dread. My shower history is nothing impressive – communal ones at summer camp with random bugs crawling along the walls, personal ones at summer camp with the white, plastic liner acting as a clingy, cold curtain, the collection of sorority showers and collegiate showers in collegiate houses and apartments (enough said), and, for the past four years, a commercial apartment complex’s poor excuse for a “renovated” and “updated” shower experience (complete with old tile walling and hot water temperatures that lasted about 10 seconds).

I’ll be fair and give credit where credit is due to my parent’s shower. It’s big and it’s nice and it has a massive shower head that waterfalls down upon you as if you’re Pocahontas receiving her daily bath from nature. But my parents know how good they have it with that shower, and receiving clearance from them to set foot in there and dirty it up with your daily muck and experience true shower nirvana is something that happens rarely and usually only around the high holidays.

But last week, my life was changed. For 26 years, I’ve managed to get myself clean somehow but never really put much stock into it. If there was ever the perfect scenario in which you just “go through the motions,” showering was one of them. This is no longer my life. Now, in my new home with my new shower, I can finally say I know and understand first-hand the joy felt from taking an incredible shower.

Your water pressure is a dream. So hard, so… heavy. Who cares if you have one or two streams that spray off in random, uncontrollable directions? The rest of you is perfect and rains down upon me with the force of a thousand perfectly tempered suns.

And your ability to stay hot for so long? Do you take shower viagra or something? You have to be on something to be that good. Sure, you’re sensitive to my touch. If I move your handle just an inch, you drop or rise in temperature by 20 degrees. But the point is that, no matter where your handle may be, you stay consistent in that position. Once, I raced through my showers as quickly as my body could move me in fear of running out of steam – no more. Now, I can take my sweet time and know you ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Oh and the fact that you’re glass instead of curtain? I mean, I’ve never considered myself a materialistic girl, but once you go glass… It’s like dating a guy who takes you to eat bar food for dates, then dating a man who takes you to get sushi or steak for dates. You’re so sparkly all the time. I feel like I can really see you now. In fact, sometimes, I can see right through you (especially when I use my shower squeegee before exiting you). And, yeah, you’ll probably acquire some soapy mold over the next few months but the difference is, I don’t have to physically see it forming on you like I would with other showers and their curtain faces. And even if I could see it, I’d still love you. Because I accept you for all you are – even your imperfections.

I know this is a lot to digest. After all, it’s only been a week and a half since we met. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to write you and let you know what you’ve done to me already (besides make me clean). I’m not going to say I’m sorry, because love means never having to say you’re sorry. Not even to your shower.

With adoration and a side of creepiness,
Emma