Feb 14, 2020

The doors closed behind me as I entered the locker room at the spa. I’d been long awaiting the Goddess Treatment, a recommendation. “Sweat from your eyes, get scrubbed, eat the noodles, and melt into the warm tile floor,” she said. Uh yes, sign me up.

I started searching for locker 11, my heart rate starting to rise. Wait, where do I go? Where are the towels or robes? Or a place to hide? Boobs of every shape and size beautifully graced the chest of every woman around me. In a haunt, my breast-less chest hollowed again. How did I not realize I’d be scar topped in front of strangers for the first time? Panic set in as I walked into the bathroom stall and closed the door behind me. Then a text to G, What was I thinking?

I will not be defined by my loss. I will not. My shaking hands untied the drawstring on my pants, after I took a moment, and cloth hit the floor. I tucked everything into the locker with my fears and ended up in the mugwort, where my scars sat just above the waterline in a mix of shame and pride. My head tipped back, I looked to the skylight, closing my eyes, sinking deeper in. We deserve to live in our bodies, I thought.

After wringing myself out between cold and hot soak, I was indeed scrubbed, manhandled, and massaged by a woman in her underwear, as I lay completely naked in an open room. More layers of skin than I knew I had lay in clumps on the bed near me. Grey bits of skin, mixed with grief and poison, no doubt, scrubbed off- goodbye.

I lept once more into the cold pool, thinking to myself how the shocking temperature was so much easier than hard things done. As the chill hit my skin, I swam- life filled, alive, in love, and content, with a loss. “I have never felt more human, or naked or connected,” she said. Same, friend, same. Walked out of the spa just as the sun did its own sinking, painting the sky. I felt myself. Wearing clothes, I was still naked. And, I’m realizing lately- there really is no feeling more beautiful.