At first it's liberating. You exist only from the neck up. You don't paint your toes. Then you don't match your socks. You don't shave your legs, then you don't soap them, then you don't spread lotion on them, relieving yourself of fussy habits that took up time before. You still wash your private parts, usually, then less usually, less purposefully, you're not wearing underwear anymore so the whole remove wash put on new underwear 3fer is no longer a guide. There's no yoga, the only reason you ever shaved your armpits anyway. You stand in the shower now, just stand there, like you used to when you shared one and it was his turn to pump the shampoo. Now nobody is there and you rarely bother doing anything. You stand under hot water, that's it, just stand there trying to feel grateful that there is still hot water, trying not to wonder if that will go away too. Later, you watch your hair dry in online meetings, in which you are increasingly muted, springing into massive curls as if it has a life of its own, which it must because yours has slipped away. No it's still there, your life, it's just full of holes now where things have left it that you didn't want to see go. And now it's your mind that is slipping away. It should be directing your limbs to cut onions or something, to make another spreadsheet or something, but it won't. It becomes obsessed with living backwards in time and accuses you, "This is all your fault, if you hadn't let the toenails go nothing else might have been lost. You let the slipping start, and now you can't hold on to anything. You can't even hold your tears in." You try to talk your mind into starting over, let's paint our toes. But it won't. It doesn't trust you anymore and you don't trust it. You and your mind are breaking up, and you don't know how to stop it.