The Drain in the Sink

The Gunk on Your Soul and How to Get Rid of It

Tallulah Bacon

I often find myself putting off self-care until later. I tell myself I’ll do it when I’m in a better mood or when life isn’t so busy and stressful. For some reason, it seems easier just to take shelter and wait for the storm to pass. I always worry I’m not strong enough to handle processing difficult things while actively going through them. 

Instead, I let the gunk in my life accumulate until it starts clogging the drain. I get too scared to reach inside and remove the rotten, smushy pieces of myself, so instead, I let them fester. My sink gets fuller and fuller until it eventually overflows, and I’m left to deal with a bigger mess than I started with. How can I break this cycle? How can I keep the drain clear? Despite having recently done a deep clean, I still ask myself, how can I keep my psyche shiny and gunk-free? 

One thing I learned while working in the food industry is the clean-as-you-go method. Rather than letting messes build up over time and later having to dedicate a lot of hard work to get your space clean again, you just do a tiny little bit as the messes happen. Self-care becomes easier when you make it a habit to practice it in small doses every day. 
Some ways that I keep my sink clean are weekly therapy, reading in the park, listening to curated playlists, morning stretches, eating breakfast on the porch, buying myself flowers at Trader Joe’s, and always having a scented candle perfuming my room. There will always be days when cleaning up after myself is a lot harder, but I always remind myself that it’s better to make a habit out of kindness than a habit out of avoidance. Clogs in the drain are inevitable, but I now know that I have the perfect tools to make myself shine again.