I bought a blender once

I bought a blender once. I was striving to try to be healthy and help myself out of my postpartum depression. I had innumerable articles about fresh fruits and vegetables acting as mood boosters, and I decided to give it a try. A real try. One smoothie a day. The idea was a good one, and it worked for a while.

Over time, it became exhausting to keep up with washing the thing. Leaving it in the sink for a day or two didn't seem so wrong. After all, I was a tired new mom. I was just cutting myself some slack. That’s all. Each day it was left, the harder it became to clean. I began to hate using it all and my smoothies became far and few between.

One day I decided it'd be nice to make one. Enough time had passed that I forgot how much of a burden cleaning the machine had become to me. I enjoyed the delicious fruit beverage and rinsed the blender when finished. I was being responsible, finally.

A funny thing happened right then. The water ceased to drain and only rose in the sink, failing to carry away the fruit stained water. With a groan I tried to unclog the sink drain, to no avail. The blockage must have been deep.

I tried Drano, Riddex, and any other corrosive solution to remove the obstacle. It was no use. The sink was out of commission, and I would have to wait for my landlord to get into town until it could be fixed. As the days passed and the dishes piled up, something had to be done.

An idea struck me. It may not have been the most sanitary one but as far as I was concerned it was a pragmatic one. I moved the dishes to the bathtub. There was hot running water and a drain that served its purpose. It was almost the same.

It became less and less convenient over the weeks to keep crouching low or hunching over to wash the dishes. The blender took a backseat to the more important cooking utensils like the pots and cups. I pushed it back on the top ledge of the shower. Out of sight out of mind.

I grasped a handle on the dishes, washing them right after I used them and tried not to let them pile up. That is, until the washer broke.

I had to ration which items would take up space in the bath each day. Between soaking the clothes, washing the dishes, bleaching the tub as frequently as needed, and giving the baby baths, my own showers became scarce. Any association the bathroom had with cleanliness was missing and replaced with the burden of numerous and unending chores.

Some time later, on an ambitious day, I had finally cleared the dishes and successfully washed the clothes for the day. The shower was mine. After washing it down with bleach and soap I let the warm water rain upon me. It felt good to let the steam wash away the grease that had collected upon my skin and hair. Just when I finally felt clean for the first time in a long time I felt suddenly spied upon.

No one else was home so I figured it was a random bout of paranoia. I closed my eyes and washed my face, turned straight ahead to the ledge. When I opened my eyes I thought I saw movement. Something small, hardly noticeable. It could have been nothing. My eyes were blurred from the soap and water, but upon noticing them my stomach lurched.

The blender I had forgotten about, the one I had once cherished, sat on the ledge facing me, and it was teeming with movement. Inside the thing scores of maggots wiggled across the glass, each one leaving a trail of condensation. It was muggy and fogged up from the trapped heat. Throughout the duration of my negligence, it had created its own ecosystem. The fruit had rotted, attracted flies, and from the eggs that were laid larva had hatched. I watched in horror as they squirmed and writhed, but I did nothing.

Once my shower was done I left the room. I didn't look at it again until the next time I showered, and only out of sheer curiosity did I gaze at the blender. Had they really even been there at all? Or was it a hallucination from sleep deprivation?

This time when I looked, black flies orbited the inside of the glass. They moved in neat circles, going up and down, looking for a way out. I couldn’t ignore the smell this time. It was faint but obviously there. Obviously quite real. The sweet stench of fermentation. Nature's warning against the rot of fruit.

Now, even if I wanted to clean the thing I couldn't without the flies getting out. I weighed my options. I was reluctant to throw the thing away even though I knew I could never, in good conscience, use it again. Not with those images of writhing worms and black flies buzzing about in my head.

There wasn't any point in keeping it, but something about throwing it away didn't seem right. It was supposed to be a symbol of my health, and of the new and responsible life I had decided upon for myself. Instead, it became a reflection of my reality and of my inability to stick with a healthy lifestyle. It was a living symptom of my laziness and failure to overcome obstacles. It was a visual representation of my depression.

As I cried, overwhelmed and tired from the insurmountable amount of chores, I thought about the shower and all the uses I had for it. All this time I had been creating one more. A display case for my blender of flies. I was not proud of this at all. So, I finally tossed the thing.

Even though it’s gone, and I haven’t let anything get so bad since, I often think of it as a unique insight into my mind and intentions at the time. It started out innocent, inspirational even, but I let it get out of hand and gave myself too much slack. I loosened my grip and let it fall through the cracks.

I could always get a new blender, but the pride in myself and the hopeful spark of a new start, I lost. It took a while to get back and apply what I learned. Moving to a home that wasn’t constantly falling apart, getting more sleep, and my precious baby getting older definitely helped, but something new had grown within myself.

When I close my eyes I can still see it vividly. A perfect, yet disgusting, reminder of how bad things can get when I stop trying. I realized I could use that reminder to beat myself down further, or to motivate myself to be better.