She stepped into the shower with the zebra-stripe curtains. She didn't know why she had bought them, but they matched the towel she would wear out of the bathroom when she finished. Immediately the water beat down on her, neither too hot, nor too cold. As she sighed involuntarily, she stepped the rest of the way into the shower, taking care not to get her hair wet. Her hair was sensitive to shampoos and conditioners and she could only use them so often. Yet to find the right one, she didn't mind if her hair was a little more wild than her friends.
Her physical appearance was not her greatest concern. Rarely did she wear makeup or leave the house dressed anything but casually. Perhaps her greatest, or only, concession to vanity was her shoes, knee-high high-top sneakers, in the style of Converse All-Stars. When the colder seasons began, she traded them in for heavy boots, though. It wasn't as if she went anywhere with them, she mostly sat at home writing sad poetry.
She had sold some of her sad poetry, though. Which only drove her to write more, sure that if she had sold one thing, she could sell others. So far she had had no luck and many rejections, but she didn't let this discourage her. She wrote to write, to get the constant tumultuous feelings and worries out.
In the shower, she didn't have these worries, though. Her mind was at ease and she had no complaints. The water landed between her barely-there breasts and rolled down her body, coating her with warmth. When that got too warm, she turned and let the water caress her shoulders instead. This was a blissful time for her, so funny that she hated doing this. But there was something about undressing and becoming vulnerable that terrified her on some level.
She did not love her body. It constantly disappointed her. Her barely-there breasts were... barely there. Her stomach curved outward in a way it hadn't always. She told herself this was all part of having a more feminine body, getting curves, but why couldn't they be distributed in a more attractive way? She thought it made her look trashy, with her stomach extending past her breasts. But she couldn't help the way her body was.
The meds they had put her on to help her stop cutting herself calmed her down. They also made her gain 60 pounds. Some nights she would go to be crying at the loss of her svelte body. With that, her breasts hadn't seemed so disappointing. As vain as it was, she could pretend she was a model and though that didn't make up for the rest of her worries, it let her believe that her body was perfect, that something about her wasn't flawed.
In the shower, she ran her hands over her belly and sighed. The bliss of the shower had been interrupted by her thoughts of a more perfect body. In frustration she clutched at her breasts. Her ass had grown, her thighs had grown, her stomach... why not her breasts?
Then the shower suddenly turned cold and she raced to shut it off, nearly slipping and falling on her ass. Luckily her balance was still good and she managed to stay upright. But fear replaced frustration for a moment and she stood there, suddenly cold from the spray of the water she had just shut off. She reached through the zebra-stripe shower curtain for the zebra-stripe towel. After she dried herself off, she let her hair down, then wrapped the towel around herself, tucking the end of the towel into the space between her right breast and her underarm.
Opening the shower curtain halfway, she peered out at the bathroom, her small pile of clothes sitting on the toilet. She stepped over the edge of the bathtub onto cold linoleum floors, decorated with intersecting squares. After she picked the clothes up, she wiped the mirror off and looked at herself. She looked good, she thought, despite her dissatisfaction with her body.
Then she went into her room and sat down on her bed, laid back and stared at the ceiling. It was time to write again.
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