keep away from pets and women

//beep beep beep beep// the alarm on your phone goes off. 7:30am. you've got to leave for work in an hour. you solve the math problem on your alarm to [[turn it off]]. no snooze for you, you barely have enough time to get everything done.

you flip through the notifications on your phone. email, twitter, other email, weather, a coupon code, the other weather app you keep forgetting to uninstall. better [[get up]].

you plop your phone onto the bed next to you, your partner has already left for the day. you shift onto your side, and your ----- shift with you. you notice them, feeling the "ping" of dysphoria resonate through your chest. you're sure glad you always sleep [[with a shirt on]].

for the last two months, the shirt-in-bed has served a second purpose. your partner is a woman, and the instructions stuffed into the pharmacy bag with your T said to not let it come into contact with "women or pets". so you keep your shoulders covered, in some backwards act of modesty. but really though, you have to [[get out of bed]].

feet on the floor now, you stand up. phone in hand, you plod your way to the bathroom. it's 7:50am by the time you next look at the time, and you haven't taken your shower yet. fuck. [[let's think]].

gotta leave by 8:30 to take the train to work. it'll take 15 minutes for the T to dry before you can put your shirt on, plus 5 minutes to put it on, plus 10 minutes of waiting after the shower so you're fully dry before you put it on. fuck, that's 30 minutes. you lie to yourself and say that the 10 minutes you have [[will be long enough for a shower]].

you start playing a news podcast on your phone, put it in a waterproof bag, and take it into the shower with you. the news will stress you out, of course, but at least it'll be something to think about instead of your own body. you turn on the water. [[make it hot]].

you get undressed, and the next thing you know, 5 minutes have passed as you stalled by clipping your nails or watering the fern in the bathroom or cleaning the sink or something. you don't remember which one, and it doesn't matter. you snap out of dissociating only slightly, sigh, and [[step into the shower]].

fuck, it's hot, way too hot. is this how hot you used to always have the water? your body regulates temperatures differently now, but you're pretty sure that you never kept it this hot, right? it's scalding. you turn down the water temperature, without consciously noting that it's [[still hot enough to numb your skin]]. it's on purpose, though.

the news anchor on your podcast is talking about last night's update on the most recent political scandal. you immerse yourself in her voice, back to the shower head. you drift out of your body, thinking only of her words, imagining the faces of the people involved in her news story as though you're watching her on TV. [[time passes]], and you realize that you need to keep moving. you don't notice it yet, but 15 minutes have passed since you got in the shower.

shampoo. lather it up. this is easier now that your hair is shorter. [[rinse]]

you always forget: do you prefer to do conditioner or face wash first? does conditioner even do anything when your hair is this short? you dissociate again, listening to the podcast. you put a small blob of conditioner into your hand, and then gently spread it into your hair. [[minutes pass]]

right yes, face wash. you got a new kind a week ago. now that your skin is really oily, you totally had to change the face products you use. you pump out a big blob, and rub it into your face, and down your neck, and then your chest, and under your -----. your mind blanks out as you clean the sores there. [[you lose time again]]

rinse. washing the conditioner out of your hair is easy. deep breath in, and you stick your face under the shower head. you [[rinse your face]], holding your breath.

you've never been good at holding your breath underwater. sure that all the face cleanser is off, you stick your face out of the shower, eyes still shut, and grab a towel to wipe the water out of your eyes. the news anchor on the podcast talks about a water crisis. you [[pause again]]

you turn around, face towards the shower head again, and rinse off your -----. you so desperately want the acne to go away, to stop yourself from picking at it. you think of [[last night]]

before bed, after your partner was already practically asleep but while you were still finishing your nightly routine, you had done the same thing. rinse your face, rinse your chest. you looked down, feeling-- . you can't remember how you felt, you dissociated. you justified taking tweezers and picking at your skin by noticing a few small pimples. you picked and picked at every tiny blemish, willing them away through careful precision. you wished you were able to do this to the much much larger blemishes on your chest. the podcast news anchor welcomes her guest, and [[you snap back to the present, in the shower]].

you feel tight, you could cry. you wished that the rumor was true, that T makes you stop feeling. it's a lie, though. T makes you dissociate less, feel more, cry more. [[you pump some body wash onto your cloth]] as the news anchor asks her guest "did i summarize that correctly?".

you take time washing your arms and shoulders, that's where the T will go soon. you skip over your chest as quickly as possible, to your stomach and legs. you graze the cloth over your chest, as though you're touching it on accident, as you swing it around to your back. why can't you exfoliate away every blemish you hate. [[you rinse yourself off.]]

then you stand there, feeling the hot water on your back as the news anchor thanks her guest, and goes to commercial. your mind floats out again. [[fuck, you need to keep moving.]]

you turn the water off, and towel-dry yourself thoroughly. you notice the time. oh fucking shit, it's 8:20, and you need at least another 20 minutes just for the process of dealing with T. fuck it, guess you're running late today again. luckily you don't have any meetings until 11am. the instructions on your T say that you have to let your shoulders dry for 10 minutes, which means you can't put your shirt back on. walking around without a shirt on makes you want to panic again, so you [[lie stomach down on the bed]], looking at your phone.

you check twitter and instagram and your chat program. 15 minutes have passed by the time you look at the time again. dammit. you "finish what you're doing" to avoid getting up. [[ugh fuck]].

fine, you're up again. you take a breath. the next thing to be done is the highlight of your morning, at least. you grab a little tube from the box, similar in appearance to a tube of super glue. you smile, noticing proudly how many you've already used. you screw off the cap, turn it around to pierce the seal, and [[the T starts to flow out]].

you squeeze a bit onto a hand, and rub it onto your left shoulder, then under your left arm, near the armpit. you do the same with your right shoulder, trying to even distribute the sticky gel. then you reach your arms to rub the gel on the top of your back on each side. you [[wipe the remaining gel on the top of your chest]], and then wash your hands.

it usually takes two washes to gel all the gel off, and then you toss the tube into the bathroom garbage. you're careful not to get gel anywhere, because you don't want your partner to touch it on accident. you consider lying back down in bed again, because you have to wait for the T to dry. some days you would, but today you're running late enough as it is. you go [[find some pants, and get as dressed as you can.]]

you do as much of the rest of your morning routine as you can, until 15 minutes have passed and you can maybe safely put your shirt on without it sticking to you the entire day. you interact with your ----- for the last time for a while as you put your binder on. you know it's not safe to wear a binder for this long, but you justify it to yourself by pretending your binder "isn't as tight as it's supposed to be." you know that it'll make the acne worse, but that's a problem for nighttime you. [[you leave for work, 45 minutes later than you'd hoped.]]

on your train, you remind yourself to talk to your doctor about maybe switching to injections. you don't know how much longer you can deal with this process of showering and putting on the gel every fucking morning. the end.