Well, ladies
I put body lotion on last night and I am still thinking about it, which is either very sad or the whole point. I think it is the whole point.
I had been putting off showering all day. Classic me. I had a reason for every hour I skipped it. Too early, then I was in the middle of something, then I would just do it before bed, then it was almost midnight and I finally went. I am not proud of this but I am also not going to pretend it does not happen regularly. ☕
After I got out I grabbed the lotion and instead of doing the thing I normally do, which is slap it on my arms in about four seconds while already reaching for my pajamas, I just stood there and put it on slowly. Arms, then stomach, then legs.
And I do not know how to say this without sounding like a commercial for something, but I felt my own skin for the first time in I do not know how long.
Not in a medical way. Not checking for anything. Just my hands on my own body, moving slowly, and me noticing that I was warm and that my skin was soft and that I have a body at all.
I called Dani this morning and told her about it and she said "Sonia, that is literally what I have been saying about the cold shower thing" and I said no, it is not, because the cold shower is about doing something hard and this was about doing something gentle. She laughed and said "fine, but you felt your body, right, that is the point." And she is right, even though she got there from a completely different door. 🤍
Here is what I think happened. I have spent so long thinking of my body as the thing I maintain, the thing I move around in, the thing that is tired or stiff or too soft or not what it used to be, that I forgot it is also the thing I live in as a woman. Not a patient. Not a project. A woman.
Sexy is not a word I would have used for what I felt last night. But it was closer to that than anything I have felt in a long time. The word I keep coming back to is "mine." My body felt like mine again, not like a problem I am behind on solving.
There is something real in this and it is not just emotional. When you put your hands on your own skin slowly, especially across the chest and the sternum, your breathing actually changes. It gets slower, deeper. Clare would want the reason, so here it is: gentle pressure over the center of the chest activates parasympathetic pathways, the same ones that calm your heart rate when someone you trust puts a hand on you. You can be that someone for yourself. It is not a substitute. But it is not nothing.
Try it. Not the lotion specifically, though that was nice. Hold something warm against your chest for ten seconds, a mug, a towel out of the dryer, your own hand, and notice whether your breathing shifts. It will. Not because you decided to relax, but because the nerve pathways underneath respond to warmth and gentle pressure whether you are paying attention or not. Ten seconds is enough to feel it.
I have been walking around all day with this strange quiet feeling of having been touched, even though it was just me. That probably sounds lonelier than it is. It was not lonely at all. ✨
It was Tuesday and I was standing in my bathroom at midnight remembering that I have a body and she is fine and she is warm and she has been here the whole time.
