Comfort Level

For Valentine’s Day B. and I did something special.  I got my very first massage.  This was a huge step for me, personally.  I had resigned myself to living a life devoid of strangers touching me.  I always felt awkward about it.  Paying someone for pleasurable physical contact has always been a little too akin to prostitution for me.  Maybe it’s my warped sensitivity about gender roles; maybe I’m just an inherently awkward person.  But B. loves them, so with her in the room for moral support and assurance that I wasn’t embodying that pale creep with thinning hair and a pencil thin blonde mustache who haunts the nightmares of all women everywhere, we went in together.

 As we entered out dimly lit room with ambient noise wafting from a small stereo in the corner, our masseuses (B. gave me some playful ribbing that they were both women) discussed where we wanted them to focus, our tension spots, etc.  Then as they left the room they asked us to undress to our comfort level.  I momentarily regretted not bringing a parka or at least a turtleneck, but B. and I stripped down and quickly hopped into our beds.

The next hour is sort of a blur.  They quietly came in once we were decent and ready and began to work.  She worked out numerous knots I didn’t know I had.  My shoulders melted.  My spine liquefied.  I was a blob.  A semi-conscious, heavy-lidded, relaxed blob.  I didn’t know the massage extended past there, but as she dug her elbow into my legs, I melted even more. (I had run over 10k the day before)

The hour ended too soon, and we got dressed and limply noodled our way back to the car and headed home.  It was a strange sensation to feel so loose.  Zero tension in my back, my shoulders or legs.  B. felt it, too.  That night, however, I found it difficult to relax.  The mattress felt foreign under me.  The lumps and knots in my back no longer matched the topography of the springs underneath.  I tossed and turned and lay awake late into the night.  I was too relaxed to be comfortable.

This is my first semester in a long while where I haven’t maxed out my credit hours or tried balancing 6 classes with part-time work.  I’ve been told I’m a glutton for punishment.  This semester I really only have one class with a severe workload – a workload I set.  A new, experimental class was created this year, combining the talents of English, Graphic Design, Editing, Computer Science, Animation and of course Illustration majors.  Our goal: to create and publish children’s books.  At the beginning of the school year we all pitched story ideas, then voted on the most promising.  We hope to write and illustrate around ten books by April.

I’m illustrating three.  I also wrote one, though, so this truly is a labor of love.  People have given me a lot of incredulous looks when I tell them what I’m up to.  I must be insane, how do I ever relax?  Where do I find the time?  It’s a lot of late nights and early mornings, caffeine jolts and hours upon hours apart working or doing homework. 

But I’m comfortable doing it. 

B.'s no different.  She's up late along with me, trying to pass stats, genetics, insanely difficult chemistry, all while working full time in a less than desirable work environment.  But she loves school to a terrifying, borderline unhealthy level.  She's comfortable being an overworked student, as am I.

B. and I can’t seem to relax.  We’re incurable workaholics and if we’re not busy we’re not happy.  That’s where our comfort level is.  Some people can sit at home and do nothing all day; I don’t think that’s in us.

I guess my point is, some of us don't know how to relax and for some of us relaxation isn't relaxing.  If you like to be busy, be busy!  If you love relaxing all the time... well, I guess I'll just tell you now I will have fries with that, thank you.  Everyone has their comfort level.

Where's yours?


S