I’ve been crying in the L-Dub showers. This is where I came to mourn my first graded problem set, to admit that college guys aren’t interested in committed relationships, and to meditate on how chicken breast doused in pepper will be my entire diet for the next four years. The four-by-four-foot confines offer a rare moment of privacy, inviting emotional vulnerability like that boy on the first night of orientation couldn’t. The shower also offers a quick disposal of evidence––no tissues flooding the floor, no mascara crystallizing along the rims of your eyelids. And because Yale Facilities still hasn’t called me back about my high-water-pressure complaint, the pounding of droplets against the moldy granite floor provides a built-in white noise for my sniffles and occasional wails. I’m bathing in (and involuntarily sipping) a cocktail of shower water, my own tears, and a little bit of Coconut Vanilla 2-in-1 hair product. What could be more cathartic?
