The Water Never Stops Remembering

The Water Never Stops Remembering

I've been fighting water for years, and I'm losing.

Every morning I wake to the same ghost: condensation crawling down the bathroom mirror like fingers searching for something they'll never find. The tiles are slick. The grout breathes mildew. And somewhere between the shampoo bottles and the rusty caddy, there's a version of myself I keep trying to scrub away.

This isn't about cleanliness. Not really. It's about control—the illusion that if I can just keep this one small space in order, maybe the rest of my life won't feel so fucking chaotic.

Water lies. It looks innocent, clear, harmless. But it carries secrets—calcium carbonate, magnesium, soap residue—all the invisible debris of living. After every shower, these minerals settle on the glass like dust on a grave. They build up slowly, a calcified timeline of every time I stood under the spray trying to wash away something that wasn't dirt.

The hard water stains look like fingerprints from another dimension. White, chalky, stubborn. I've attacked them with vinegar, with commercial cleaners that smell like chemical warfare, with my bare hands and a rage I don't fully understand. Some days they come off. Most days they just mock me.

And the mildew—god, the mildew. It grows in the corners where the caulk meets the tile, black and creeping like the thoughts I can't quite shake at 3 AM. It thrives on moisture and neglect, two things I'm apparently excellent at providing.

I used to keep everything in the shower. Shampoo from three years ago. Conditioner I never liked. A loofah that dried into something resembling a petrified lung. They were sentinels of my indecision, proof that I couldn't even commit to a soap. Then one night, drunk on cheap wine and existential dread, I threw them all out. Every goddamn bottle. I kept one shampoo, one bar of soap, and a squeegee I bought in a fit of optimism. The emptiness felt violent at first, like I'd stripped away something essential. But then the space started breathing.

Fewer things meant fewer places for the grime to hide. It also meant I had to face what was actually there: the decay I'd been covering up with clutter.

After each shower, I squeegee the glass. Top to bottom, one long stroke per panel, water streaming down like the shower is crying. It takes maybe forty-five seconds. Sometimes I do it naked, water still beading on my skin, and I wonder if this is what meditation feels like—this mindless, repetitive motion that keeps chaos at bay for another twenty-four hours.

Then the fan. That industrial hum that drowns out everything else. I leave it running long after I've left the bathroom, long after the steam has dissipated, because I've learned that moisture is the enemy. Not just of mildew, but of clarity. Of sanity. If the room can't dry, neither can I. On good days, I crack the window. Cold air rushes in and I stand there shivering, letting the outside world steal the humidity. It feels like an exorcism.

Once a week, I strip the shower bare and face it like a confession. I spray everything—walls, floor, that cursed corner where the mold keeps coming back no matter how many times I kill it. The cleaner sits there, toxic and waiting, while I count minutes like prayers. I scrub with a brush that hurts my hands, working the bristles into grout lines that hold grudges. The grime comes away in gray streaks, swirling down the drain with all the other evidence of living. Sometimes I scrub until my arms ache. Sometimes I scrub until I can't remember what I'm angry about anymore.

Disinfecting comes after, and I'm careful now—gloves on, fan roaring, because I've learned that mixing chemicals is just another way to hurt yourself. The bleach smell makes my eyes water. It reminds me of hospitals, of sterility, of all the ways we try to sanitize what can't be cleaned.

The glass door is my adversary. Every water droplet leaves a mark, a mineral memory that accumulates into haze. I squeegee after every shower, wipe the edges where water pools in the metal frame, and still—still—the cloudiness creeps back. Hard water is relentless. It doesn't negotiate. So I've stopped fighting and started accommodating: a specialized cleaner for glass, a microfiber cloth that costs more than it should, patience I don't naturally possess. I work in small circles, watching my reflection slowly emerge from the fog like a stranger I used to know.

Clarity isn't permanent. It's just the space between buildups.

Grout tells the truth. Those thin lines between tiles—they're the first to show when you're failing. They darken with mold, crack under pressure, absorb moisture until they're soft and compromised. I scrub them with a toothbrush I'll never use on my teeth, digging into the crevices like I'm looking for answers. And the caulk. Jesus, the caulk. When it starts peeling away from the wall, when black spots bloom underneath like bruises, I know I've waited too long. I cut it out with a knife, peeling away the old seal in rubbery strips, exposing the naked seam beneath. Then I run a new bead, trying to keep my hand steady, trying to make it perfect. It never is. But it holds. For a while.

I wear gloves now, after that one time I didn't and spent three days with hands that felt like they'd been dipped in acid. I read labels like they're suicide notes—warnings about ventilation, about mixing, about the hundred ways these bottles can hurt you if you're not paying attention. Never bleach and ammonia. Everyone knows that. But I still double-check every time, because the consequences of forgetting aren't metaphorical. They're sirens and emergency rooms and phone calls to poison control. I store everything high up, locked away from hypothetical children I don't have. Maybe I'm just locking them away from myself—from the temptation to use too much, to mix the wrong things, to turn cleaning into self-destruction.

Mold is patient. It waits in corners where air doesn't move, where water pools after every shower and never quite dries. I've killed it a hundred times, and it always comes back. Not because I'm failing—or not just because I'm failing—but because moisture is inevitable. Living is wet work. The athlete's foot I got last year taught me that humidity isn't just aesthetic. It's a breeding ground. Fungi don't judge; they just grow wherever conditions allow. So I dry everything compulsively now: the bath mat gets hung to air out, towels leave the room still damp, the floor gets wiped down even when it doesn't look wet.

Perfection is a fantasy. But routine is survival.

When it's done—when the glass is clear and the grout is white and the mildew is dead for another week—there's this moment of peace. The bathroom feels larger somehow, like I've created space that wasn't there before. The light hits the tiles differently. The air tastes clean. I leave the fan running even as I walk away, that mechanical hum fading as I close the door. And for just a second, I let myself believe that if I can keep this one small space in order, maybe I'm not as broken as I think I am.

But by tomorrow morning, the mirror will be fogged again, and the water will have left new ghosts, and I'll be back in here with my squeegee and my rage and my desperate need to make something—anything—stay clean. The cycle never ends. The water never stops remembering. And neither do I.