I understand that a lack of personal hygiene is very common with depression because of the low energy, but I still feel absolutely disgusted with myself. I often think how mortifying it would be if I ended up losing my hair or my teeth when I’m only in my twenties, but for some reason I sometimes just cannot bring myself to try and prevent that.
I feel like a part of it stems from when I was a younger teen and my overbearing mother would tape this big piece of paper to my door reminding me to take care of my hygiene, because at that time I was mostly just kind of lazy (possibly also from depression, albeit to a lesser extent) – and then whenever I invited someone over, especially someone I was dating, they would see it, and they wouldn’t comment but I could just TELL that they were skeeved out that I needed to be reminded to keep up with something so basic as hygiene. It was beyond embarrassing and it lasted from the beginning of middle school to nearly my freshman year of high school.
These days I set reminders for myself on nearly everything – except that. I’m certain that reminders would help me get back on track, because I am very forgetful and they do work for me, but I have such a strange (and quite frankly very stupid and ridiculous) aversion to being told or reminded to keep myself clean, even by myself. It’s this constant circle of “too embarrassed to be dirty, too exhausted to be clean” and I honestly feel so filthy and ashamed with myself. I have no idea how I’m even going to explain myself to the dentist that I’m seeing in less than a week, they’ll probably think I’m disgusting too.