Another sleepless night - tonight I'll take a sleeping pill because I'm fed up of the tossing and turning. The morning hike is hell today. I hate it. It is through dark, damp, overgrown woods on a really narrow path and branches are constantly scratching my legs and arms. I can't even distract myself with an audiobook. I am miserable, almost panicky. I ask Stéphane if the whole walk is like this. He sort of ignores me. After an hour and a half, I ask if there is an escape route. There is an easier route 'out', and I take it. I don't feel like a failure, it was a shit walk. Jean Jacques keeps cracking jokes at my expense, I tell him I don't appreciate having the piss taken. He does that thing that inappropriate middle-aged men always do - I was just having a laugh, lightening the atmosphere. Whatever.
I'm not hungry - it's day 3 and I can genuinely say that I'm not hungry. That doesn't mean that I don't want to eat. I do, badly. I really want that lovely feeling that food in your stomach brings, even if I always get a hot flush afterwards. I want to bite, crunch, chew. I dream of things I don't normally eat - cereal with milk, kitkats, toast with butter (ok I do eat that pretty often). The menopause symptoms may have calmed a bit, but I am still getting hot flushes despite the hormones and despite the fast.
In the afternoon I have a fascia massage - this is my first time. Isabelle shows up, all doc martins and grey roots, she puts a mask over her mouth as she says she will be close to my face during the procedure and her daughter tells her she has crow breath. I like her already as anyone who protects me from their breath is a good person. The treatment is strange, comfortable and relaxing but intense at the same time. She talks a lot, but in a nice not annoying way. The hour is up but she says she wants to keep going.
Suddenly she says 'can I ask you a personal question?'. I say sure. She asks 'were you ever raped?'. Jeez, that's a first. I can honestly say no one has ever asked me that before. 'Er yes', I answer. She asks when; I tell her that it happened when I was 15 and I thought it was my fault even though I have no idea who the man was. I didn't even consider it to be rape till I was much older because I thought rape involved being dragged off, tied up, and beaten. I didn't know that if you didn't fight back it could still be rape. I didn't fight back because my instinct was to get it over and done with. At this precise moment, Paco wakes up from his snooze position in between my legs, climbs up my belly, steps over her hands that are working somewhere just under my rib cage, and kisses me on the nose.
She says well that's why you put on weight and then struggled to lose it even when you tried really hard. Your subconscious was keeping you unattractive (in your mind) to protect you from being sexually assaulted again. Gosh - that's a new one. I'm not sure if I am 100% on board with this reasoning but it's not impossible. It has certainly given me food for thought. She then asks if I have ever had any form of therapy about this trauma. Errrr, no. Her reply is a sigh of 'resignation'. She probably does have a point about that. She says that this trauma has shaped the course of my life because I just stored it away. I think she's right. I feel that my biggest life 'issue' has been my relationship with my father. But, back then, when I was 15, I never told him I was raped. So he just assumed I was a dirty little stop out which coloured his opinion of me for years. All this from a massage!
I have a headache now - not sure if it is from the massage or the detox but I'm not a happy bunny. I last through 15 minutes of Pilates before sneaking out, and I don't listen to the post-dinner talk. I put a face mask on, smother myself in body lotion because this is not a spa and there are no nice pampering treatments so I am DIY'ing it, and settle down to read myself to sleep.
Comments