I had my first massage today.
I have mixed feelings about it. I was meeting in Itaewon with the Kiterunnner for early afternoon late brunch earlier dinner and we didn’t really care at as long as it ended in wine. I’d just finished what will probably be my last work with the most recent group of teachers coming to Korea and I needed the wine.
I sat in the fancy French restaurant waiting for the Kiterunner. She had her own things going on being that her university is currently embroiled in the business of hosting diplomats which always makes things go haywire. Between her trying to figure that out and me with my book writing we hadn’t seen each other in ages.
As she walked in the door a bit after me I suggested the set menu which would get us an all too good bottle of wine with free muscles.
“Sold.”
We fired that up and enjoyed a pot full of muscles in blue cheese dressing with a bottle of wine that was certainly to hurt other people for at one in the afternoon.
“What I really want is a massage,” the Kiterunner exclaimed.
“I’ve never had a massage.”
“We should do that. I just don’t know where to go, I mean, I know a place in Apujang.”
“Where is that?”
“One the other side of the river.”
“Let’s just go get more food an wine.”
“But a massage.” And truly it did sound like a good idea even though I had never had one so I said, sure, why not, and we used our varying boxes of knowledge to look up places. Healing Hands won the round and it was just up the street from our lovely snack so seemed the way to go.
“We have to go through the restaurant to get there?” she asked as we arrived. And yes, we did, we went up the third floor, walked in, and asked if we could get a massage. We were sort of in a bind since I had a train schedule to get to and had not made appointments, but to our luck there we had only a short wait and were able to get in on the couple massage rate.
When we walked in, confronted with the table in towels, I looked over at the kiterunner.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”
“You put on the shorts.”
“Do I need to take of my bra.” I had already realized this would be a part of the deal, but I was having trouble acknowledging this particular part of the deal. The joys of early childhood abuse lurked in the background but I refused to allow that to enter the realm of the current process.
“Yeah, take off the bra.”
Ok.
Kiterunner suggested I put all things in a basket at the front of the table, so I did. I tucked my bag in a corner, climbed on the table with nothing but knit shorts on and tried to relax. That did not go so well. Issues being touched aside, my brain is just too busy to allow me to relax in full. I have thoughts of work float through, the the Irish and the One take a sit and spin, I try to breath, I try to clear my mind, I chant in rhythms and try to think of anything I remember about meditation from reading Sidhartha by Herman Hesse, but really, there is only so much you can do and if they mind refuses to be still there you are. Above all I worked to not think about the thing that was really bugging me. The issue underlying all the other issues and try as I might it was still there.
That is the thing about issues. We all have them. Some of us chose willfully to acknowledge that they are there and work to root out their existence in our life. Others just pretend they don’t exist and continue life around them as if they issue is not important, relegating the importance to nothing. It’s not just nothing, though. Those experience shape everything we do. Maybe it my years at Shimer, maybe my years in therapy, or maybe it is just my years, but those experiences matter. Knowing them, confronting the, experiencing them, it’s all part of what a person has to do to become more whole, and without it a person is floundering nothing.
So I embraced the memories and the lack of control and the moments that I thought would most assuredly break my down and make me snap, and that single moment where I wanted to run out of room, all of it a mental combination of pain while the physical was nothing more than what it was supposed to be a simple massage, and a good massage at that.
The girls who were conducting our rub had us sit up towards the end and as they beat off the last bits of stress they could find in our back they said goodbye and left us wrapped in towels.
“That was so necceassary.” The Kiterunner pipes from next to me.
“It was….” And here I am. I have not confronted the Kiterunner with my past, and in reality I don’t like to do it, though I will talk about my past and my pain and my trauma with downright impunity it has never really been easy for me and I don’t like to think that past experiences beyond my control my color future opinions of me. However in that moment there was no way to avoid how my own personal past was encroaching upon my experience.
“It was good, but I don’t know if I would ever want to do it again.”
“Really, why not.”
“Let’s discuss it over wine.”
We left the shop after a glass of tea, and I felt more relaxed and more tense. There was confrontation on the horizon and processing and reflection on those things that are physically necessary and those ridiculous memories that want to take unopposed grips. There was exposition that I would rather avoid, and the necessity to share, yet again, with someone who I must admit being bonded too.
“Let’s discuss it over wine.” I repeated and we exited from the warm and comforting aromatherapeutic den into cool chill air, with warm backs, and decidedly more mellow, into brisk reality and early evening.
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