Bathroom

Last night in the wee small hours, it occurred to me that my life with Jo can be compared almost perfectly to the bathroom here.

No, I can't bring myself to say either "our bathroom" nor "my bathroom"

When we first got this place, we wanted to get in and sorted as quickly as possible, so we bought cheap paint and painted the walls. It wasn't the greatest thing ever, but it was what we wanted.

When me and Jo got together, we dated for less than two months before I moved into her parents with her. People didn't like it, but it made us happy, even though the nay sayers said it wouldn't last.


After a time, the bathroom looked awful; we knew it, everyone else knew it, and in the space of a few days, it was torn apart and redecorated almost completely. People saw it and knew we'd worked hard.

After a couple of years together, we slowly started drifting apart. Jo left for 24 hours, but she came back, and we sorted everything out between us, talking about everything. People knew we'd worked hard on us.


Over the years, various toys and suchlike have appeared in the bath, from baby seats, to swimming Action Man and everything in between, including special soaps for cradle cap, no-tears formulas, cream and whatever else.

Over the years, we've had children, and given them all the love within us. We've cared for them, doctored them, loved them and given them things to make them grow and keep them safe.


Our shower broke down. It was hard to cope without one after being used to it, but we managed, washing one anothers hair over the bath, and it was fixed.

We lost Bethy. Life without her was awful, and the loss was huge, but we worked together, and we came through it together, stronger.


The bathroom has never been perfect. There have been cracks, things that needed repairing, grout on the tiles needed scrubbing off properly. We made do as best we could with what we had. Sometimes Jo would clean it, sometimes I would clean it. Every now and then, one of us would strip everything out and do it over.

Over the years, we'd had our bumps, our trials and tests on the relationship. The minor stuff we sorted out, sometimes I would work tell Jo what was up, sometimes Jo would tell me what was up. Sometimes we sat together and compared problems, and every now and then, we'd have a really hard time but work it out.


Strange things appeared in the bathroom over the years - things you wouldn't find in most other bathrooms, and are either out of place or just plan strange. People might have noticed things, but we would smile and either tell them what it was for, or tell them to mind their beeswax.

We've been through some very strange times while together, things that some couples wouldn't even worry about occurring in their lifetime. Friends would question what we were doing, or what we were up to, but it was our relationship, and we knew what we were doing.

I stood in my bathroom this morning at 2am just looking at it. Looking at the cracks, the grout, the toys and everything else in there and wondered... If I had removed the grout sooner, if we'd fixed the cracks earlier, would this bathroom be the perfect bathroom today...

I was scrubbing grout off the wall last night. I need to start fixing things for me.