My Personal Journey with Body Odor – Part 2

by bodyodorpsych

The day when I was first made aware of my body odor problem was one of the most confusing days of my life. I had no idea what to think as I headed back to the classroom, but I made sure not to make eye contact with the teacher or anyone in the class as I went back to the desk I was sitting at earlier. The teacher may have noticed my return but acted like she was unaware of what the story was about and just continued explaining the lesson for the day. I looked at my notebook and realized I still had some problems to finish, but I just could not be in the mood.

As soon as I was back home, I went straight to my room and sat on the bed just thinking about the incident for an hour or so. Then I went to the living room and saw my brother there. For some strange reason, I asked him if he had some teacher today have a private chat with him. He told me he did not and asked me what was wrong. I just told him that all was good and we left it at that.

When I was done eating, I decided to go take a shower to get rid of the “dirt” on my body that was offending my teachers and classmates with its odor. I stayed in the shower for about an hour, carefully scrubbing away at every part of my skin with a sponge covered with lots of foamy soap. When I was done, I felt hopeful despite the embarrassment earlier in the day, hopeful that I would never again offend anyone with bad body odor.

Later that night, as I was lying on bed waiting to fall asleep, I thought more about the incident. It just couldn’t leave my mind at all. I was wondering how I could have been so stupid to allow such an embarrassing and disrespectful thing to happen. In my mind, I was the one to blame for not being “clean enough” to avoid offending people. I also realized then why people did not generally seem to have the desire to befriend me and sit with me in class. I also remembered comments in the past made by past friends and relatives that were, upon recall, actually hints about my own smell. And to think I just simply ignored them and did not take notice.

I was hardly able to sleep that night, but eventually, I did.

The next morning, I woke up feeling slightly better, but still thinking about that same incident. It was another day for me to go to school, and I did not want this to happen again. So I took a quick shower to make sure I was really clean before heading to school. And I did something I only ever did on rare occasions. I put on some deodorant. Now, nobody can say a word about me reeking! Or so, that was I thought.

I left the house and walked to the bus stop. As there were other people also waiting at the bus stop, once I was there, I kept looking around subtly for signs and expressions of disgust and disapproval of my smell. I could see none. So I thought that all was good.

The bus arrived, and I got in. I did the same subtle investigative look inside the bus as well. No signs.

At school, it was the same thing. Nothing. I was going to feel alright now. Or was I?

I was still sitting on my own in my classes that day. And it just so happened that I was the only one sitting alone. Was it still an odor issue? Or was I just not the kind of person that people wanted to be friends with?

Where were the couple of friends I had already made there at school? I did not share any class with either of them that day, so it was understandable why I was sitting on my own. But why was it they always found reasons to avoid spending much time with me during breaks?

I skipped the afternoon classes and went back home early. I felt quite worried, and even scared. Was there a nightmare that was about to occur?

Nothing major happened for the first few weeks after that incident. And, in fact, I was starting to believe maybe I was stressing too much about this. But one morning, while in the school bus, it was revealed to me that I still had some things to stress about. I had taken a shower and put on some deodorant before leaving home, so I did not imagine I would be publicly humiliated for my odor. But it happened. A student yelled out loud that the guy sitting behind him stank. Then, to the amusement of the onlookers, he moved to another seat in a theatrical manner, making exaggerated gestures about how bad the smell was.

As you may have imagined, the guy he was referring to was me. I wanted to kill him right there on the spot. From where I was sitting, I looked at him angrily as he was covering his nose and just wanted to say something. But I faltered and ended up not saying anything.

This put me in a really bad mood that day, and I was unable to concentrate in any of the day’s classes.

As the days passed, I started to realize more and more signs of people being offended by my presence. None of them were ever as obvious as the aforementioned school bus incident , but there were not-so-quiet whispers about my smell, quick glances from unsuspecting strangers, sniffs and coughs that seemed too frequent and unwarranted, and other such signs, pointing to something wrong going on with my body. It was then that I had to accept that I had a big major problem to deal with.