Sara Korsunsky

CAS 138H: RCL II

February 1, 2017
Washing Away the Past
As a child, I suffered from severe anxiety. It was omnipresent, and the long drives my
mom made biweekly to a noted child psychologist did little to alleviate the burden. My mom,
distraught to see her oldest daughter afflicted with seemingly unfounded terrors, took me to see a
hypnotherapist who specialized in meditation. The office looked like a business waiting room
and I felt nothing as I pretended to be wooed into hypnosis. As I made my beeline to the car after
one session, the therapist gave me a meditation worksheet to practice. I quickly crumpled it into
the waiting room trash can, not realizing the power that meditation would eventually have on me.
The entire summer of my twelfth year was spent stuck in traffic on the Schuylkill
Expressway, in waiting rooms, or the corner table in the Au Bon Pain downstairs, crunching on
croissants and pretending to be okay as reality set in: my father was dying of cancer. My fears
about soccer were replaced by Will he ever come home again? and Why isnt the treatment
working? These were tragedies I read about in books I pitied the characters, but I had never
imagined being one of them. At the end of every day, when Id come home smelling like the
antiseptic hand sanitizer Id pump every time I entered and exited the room, I showered. As my
father had an emergency surgery two days before my unlucky thirteenth birthday, I let the shower
wash away the salty tracks that my tears had left.
I believe in the spiritual experience of taking a shower. There is an element of catharsis
that exists when the water hits your skin and washes away the stressors of the day. It is, in my
opinion, a form of meditation. As I watched my father valiantly fight, the shower was where I
could cry as loudly and for as long as I wanted without adding to the tangible pressure within my
household. It became a respite. The hypnotherapists ideas werent as haggard as his white beard
was it was important to take time to reflect, experience emotions, and process events in
solitude.
So now, every time I feel like Atlas, with the weight of the world on my shoulders, the
monotonous hum of the showerhead drowns out the outside noises. I revel in the quasi-militant
routine Ive established. When I dare emerge, the feeling is reminiscent of that of a baptism. As a
recent convert to Catholicism, the concept of water as purifying is extremely close to the
forefront of my mind. And with each step out of the shower, I feel better in the hope that I will
enter a new day with countless possibilities ahead. The meditation stops when the water stops,
but that small part of the day calms me and centers my mind. So now, though my dad is not by
my side, I can still hear his voice in moments of peace.