Reach Out and Touch Someone

I recently started seeing a massage therapist regularly. She's an older woman who plays the clarinet and went to college to be a band director. I'd describe her as a grown up band geek who never realized how beautiful she is. She has this insecure eagerness about her that sort of bubbles over when she gets nervous, which is always. She says I make her nervous because I have such a beautiful energy and on the mornings of my appointments she gets excited to work on me. This is exactly the opposite of what I assume any intuitive healer might feel about me. Actually, I would assume that they can sense that I'm full of baggage and tension and that I deeply embody a shit ton of pain and that any healer who doesn't run away from me must lack intuition. But with this particular woman, that is not at all what is coming up.

At the beginning of each massage, she clears the space by opening her arms wide as she whispers something to herself. Exactly what she says, I'm still not sure but it makes the corners of my mouth reach towards my ears and I gently place all my shit on the floor for her to fold into neat little piles. She gravitates towards pain I never mentioned and she finds pain I didn't yet know about. She doesn't make it go away but rather, she makes it feel better. She brings it to my attention and it's like she's saying, "you know this stuff right here?..here is where that came from and here's why it's okay." It makes it easier to carry it all around until I'm ready to let go of it. And all that shit on the floor? I don't always pick all that up at the end. I'm not sure what she does with the stuff I leave behind but the stuff I do insist on leaving with, is now perfectly organized and far more manageable than when I walked in.

Today when I left, she said that she saw my wings. They weren't bird wings but more like angel wings, blueish green and they were gigantic. She said that they were sort of coming off at the bottom so she was trying to reattach them. I guess I have been called an angel once or twice but I'm still not sure what to make of that. What I am sure of, however, is that human touch is a necessity. We need that shit, even if it's from a stranger and you have to pay them to touch you. If you're like me, you prefer to pay someone because long hugs from friends and family always felt more awkward than comforting. Either way, from a loved one or a masseuse, it's magical stuff. Babies who aren't held, suffer greatly in terms of health and development. I think adults do too. I just spent a year of my life laying in bed next to someone who wouldn't touch me. Someone who thought hello and goodbye hugs were intimacy. Someone who told me he loved me all the time but never cuddled with me, never had sex with me. I forgot what it felt like to be touched. I still can't remember what it feels like to be held. I wonder if that's why my wings have begun to detach?