**Warn­ing: this post con­tains pro­fan­ity. If that is offen­sive for you, prob­a­bly best to skip reading.

This col­lage was found at http://​www​.alreadypretty​.com

I can­not remem­ber being com­fort­able in my body since I was ten years old. Ten. By fifth grade some­thing had down­loaded into my devel­op­ing self-​​image that I did not have a good enough body. While other girls cel­e­brated the onset of their wom­anly curves, I only loathed it, feel­ing utterly at odds with the changes hap­pen­ing that I had no con­trol over.

I hated wear­ing a bra. I could barely look at my bosom as I wres­tled with the new con­trap­tion that my mother said was time for me to wear. I didn’t know how to prop­erly rig the straps and so they slipped down my shoul­ders, out from under my sleeved arms show­cas­ing to the entire ado­les­cent world that I did not know how to dress my body.

“Pull up your bra straps,” snapped one of the mean girls from my school. Every­one within earshot paused to stare at me. Embar­rass­ment flooded my gut. I hated this bra. I hated the bud­ding breasts that required me to wear a bra. I hated the mean girl and I hated me.

Fast for­ward 28-​​years later. Me and my body. Still at odds. I can’t even hardly look at myself in a mir­ror. I dread try­ing on clothes and would rather get a root canal than go shop­ping for a swim­suit. But a Sat­ur­day morn­ing brunch with two beau­ti­ful Latina women I know inspired a quest in me. “You should go, Pam. You’ll love it. It’s very relax­ing and lib­er­at­ing,” they urged. They were speak­ing of the vis­its they had enjoyed at a Korean bath­house for women. “It’s a very safe place,” they said, the two of them with their glow­ing brown sugar skin and well-​​proportioned cur­va­cious­ness. I sur­prised myself with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic agree­able­ness. Any­thing to do with my body usu­ally resulted with a No.

I hoped it would be a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, an oppor­tu­nity to begin a new era in my rela­tion­ship (or rather lack of) with my body. It seemed a date with God’s des­tiny for me to finally develop speak­ing terms with my body. A Korean bath­house for women. Only a few miles from my neigh­bor­hood, on the other side of the river in one of the sub­urbs. I read reviews on Yelp includ­ing one from a self-​​described large woman who said the bath­house expe­ri­ence increased her body accep­tance. My friends encour­aged me fur­ther as I explained, “Maybe I’ll go home and get a swim­suit to wear.” You could, they said, but it will be more ben­e­fi­cial if you don’t. Think about it, they said as we fin­ished up our arepas, deli­cious pancake-​​like corn cakes my Venezue­lan friend had pre­pared.

This sud­den will­ing­ness to make peace with my body caught me unaware. With­out too much men­tal protest, I drove across the river, pass­ing through sev­eral zip codes to find the bath­house that might trans­form my trou­bled rela­tion­ship between me and my body.

A kind faced middle-​​aged Korean woman wel­comed me. The place seemed empty. Good. I had noted only two cars in the park­ing lot. I told her it was my first time, and yes, I would like to book a scrub-​​down for after­wards. My friends had raved about it, how good they felt, reju­ve­nated and glowy. I didn’t care so much about that as I did for the quest I found myself on: to make nice with the flesh that housed my soul. Per­haps a good cleans­ing was all I needed.

The Korean bath­house woman handed me a robe and a towel and directed me to the shower room. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I cau­tiously opened the door, my imag­i­na­tion flood­ing back to the shower room of my mid­dle school and mean girls. I hated P.E.

Only one woman was in the shower room. One petite, slen­der fit Korean woman with­out a hint of mod­esty about her. She barely glanced at me.

The shower room was a large square-​​shaped room with sev­eral alcoves. Around the perime­ter of the room against the tiled walls were shower heads, spread about five feet apart. In the mid­dle of the room was a large tiled square tub with small han­dled buck­ets seated on its edge. Steam curled from the water and I won­dered, Do women bathe com­mu­nally in that? This wor­ried me for I was already feel­ing incred­i­bly vul­ner­a­ble as I sur­veyed which shower head to claim and how to take off my robe and be naked with a com­plete stranger a mere few feet away from me. But then the Korean bather did some­thing curi­ous. She had a body wash bot­tle with her and a loofah. At the side of the tub she scrubbed her legs until they were red and then dipped one of the buck­ets into the bath­wa­ter and began pour­ing and rins­ing the soap off of her legs. Then she returned to her shower. I was soon to dis­cover that the bath water was very hot, so hot that it left the skin red. The shower was cooler, and when I later mim­ic­ked her rou­tine, I dis­cov­ered how good it felt to scrub and scald then rinse with cooler water.

Now it was my Moment of Truth: I dis­robed and turned a shower on. Anx­i­ety gripped my inner girl like an assailant in a dark alley. I wasn’t expect­ing imme­di­ate empow­er­ment as soon as I uncov­ered my curves and fleshly frame,but it would have been a wel­come relief, for I could not focus on the sen­su­ous expe­ri­ence of the water cas­cad­ing down my body with all the fret­ting that erupted inside my body and mind the sec­ond I took off my robe. I was naked and I felt naked. Inside and out.

But I pressed on, deter­mined to at least fin­ish this quest of con­fronting my body issue as if I was in a marathon. I might come in last place, but fuck it, I am going the dis­tance.

The Korean woman paced around the room, from shower to tub and back again. I seemed invis­i­ble to her. She show­ered, scrubbed more body parts—includ­ing down there—and again per­formed the rit­ual of rins­ing off from the steamy square tub. I made my shower quick then robed up again to explore the adja­cent sauna. It had a door. Doors are good. Doors pro­vide pri­vacy. Doors hide the curvy bod­ies of over­weight, inse­cure women like me.

The sauna smelled good, like an old-​​growth for­est after a warm sum­mer rain. There were two tiers of wooded planks to sit upon. I took off my robe and climbed upon the higher tier, lean­ing my frame against the warm wall. The heat felt good. My mus­cles liked it. My body liked it. Yet dis­com­fort pre­vailed. It was like being on a blind date. I did not talk to my body. It did not talk to me. We were just there, the two of us, alone in the sauna.

I tried to act relaxed. Fake it ’til you make it has got­ten me through all kinds of awk­ward sit­u­a­tions. I sat with my legs stretched out. I fid­geted. I turned and swung my legs over the side. I crossed them, uncrossed them, turned and stretched them out again. I kept an eye on the door. The win­dow on it was veiled with steam, yet I could make out the bathing woman’s form, mov­ing to and fro from shower to tub. I com­forted myself by promis­ing that should any­one else show up to this sauna that I would exe­cute Plan E – Escape. No one showed up, though, and so there I sat, fid­get­ing with my body who refused to talk to me and me to it. We were clearly a mis­matched pair. Who thought up this dumb date any­way?

After a while it seemed right to exit the sauna. The Korean bather was gone and now I had the entire shower room to myself. This helped me relax a lit­tle bit. I scrubbed and scalded as I had watched her do, and though there was a cer­tain amount of plea­sure in treat­ing my skin this way, I did not fully enjoy it. It was painful to my psy­che. And yet the real test was yet to come –a full body scrub down by the Korean bath house oper­a­tor.

With all the courage I could sum­mon, I let her know that I was done with bathing and yes, we can do the scrub down. I had my robe back on as she led me to a small alcove in the shower room. A curi­ous space, it sim­ply had a a long table, like a mas­sage table, cen­tered in a com­pletely tiled room. The ceil­ing was tiled. A hose ran from the wall with a bucket next to it. They sure like buck­ets around here, I thought.

“Ok, you take off your robe and lay on your stom­ach on the table,” she announced. She, by the way, was not naked. She wore shorts and a tank top. She looked like she was going to the beach. I sum­moned courage to come as I took off my robe. It was a huge step for me to dis­robe with another bather in the room, but she was far from my per­sonal bub­ble and we did not talk to each other. Yet now here I was lying on a table like a slab of meat with a total stranger hov­er­ing about me. On the out­side I appeared calm—fake it til you make it—but on the inside there was an epic bat­tle rag­ing for con­trol. My body, which had not spo­ken to me in so many, many years since I was in mid­dle school, now sud­denly found her voice and began shout­ing at me, “Stop! I do not want to do this. Get me out of here and get me out of here now!“

“It’s ok,” I said to my body self. “She has done this many times before. You are safe. You are going to be fine and we are going to learn to like and trust one another in this. We can do this.“

The Korean woman geared up with loofah scrub­bers on her hands. She pour gen­er­ous amounts of body scrub on me and began scrub­bing me down. It was not that pleas­ant as I felt that my skin was being sanded. I knew this level of exfo­li­a­tion would be good for my skin, and though that was a nice ben­e­fit to con­sider, I kept my focus on my real goal : to change my rela­tion­ship with my body from a neg­a­tive one to a pos­i­tive one.

She scrubbed every­where. I mean, Every­where! The whole time we chat­ted, the kind of ban­ter I do with my hair­dresser. I tried to ignore that she was scrub­bing not only around my boobs, but scrub­bing My Boobs as my body raged inwardly in protest, “No one washes these girls except me. End this now.“

“Hang in there, just a lit­tle while longer and it will be over. You can do this,” I coached myself.

“Ok, almost done, ” she said as she reached for the hose to fill up the bucket again. Each time she fin­ished scrub­bing an area, she would take a bucket of water and gen­tly pour it over me, wash­ing the dead skin and dirt away. I was being bap­tized as lit­er­ally a new body was being exca­vated from under the old. My body had qui­eted down as she rinsed me off one last time.

After I had dressed and reen­tered the real world of my mini­van and sub­ur­ban road­ways, I drove home with a tremen­dous sense of accom­plish­ment.

I did it. I had con­quered my body fears and allowed myself to be phys­i­cally vul­ner­a­ble. A surge of con­tent­ment flowed through my body. Quiet she was, yet peace­ful. I did feel reju­ve­nated and lib­er­ated.

Yet it did not last.

Within a few days I began to relive the expe­ri­ence as if it had been a trauma. Anx­i­ety surged, not peace. How could you do that to me, whis­pered my body from some far­away cor­ner of my psy­che. How could you give up con­trol? I knew I couldn’t trust you.

Once again, my body and I were at an impasse where we remain to this day.

Even right now as I pen this, there is a sense of dis­loy­alty, a burn of shame that  I am  betray­ing a secret, the secret of my dis­cord with all-​​things-​​my-​​body.  I worry that in the telling that oth­ers will attempt to diag­nose me.  She must have been abused.  She   likely was molested.  Her par­ents must have treated her bad.  She must be  emo­tion­ally immature. 

So why even post this? Why now?

In part, it is my reponse to the well received series put on by She Loves mag­a­zine, A Love Let­ter to My Body.  Click here to read the post that kicked it off and for a list of the many blog posts that have par­tic­i­pated in this syn­chroblog.   I told She Loves edi­tor,  Idelette,  I couldn’t par­tic­i­pate since my body and I aren’t talk­ing. I have no love let­ter to write.  In true free woman fash­ion, Idelette pro­posed I write about that. 

So here I am, another quest with my body, a telling on myself in the pub­lic square of the fucked up mess I have with the house of flesh I live in. I worry if you’ll judge me. I am a strong woman in so many other regards. I am strong minded. I am a strong com­mu­ni­ca­tor. I am a strong advo­cate and a fierce truth teller. Yet in this I am weak and inse­cure, my body and I.  We are strangers to one another. Dis­trust­ful and suspicious.

So why now? Why put myself and my body through the expe­ri­ence of the Korean bath house and why write about it with lucid can­dor?  I can only think of one thing:  Age.  I am 48-​​years old. I am no longer a young maiden nor a child-​​bearing female. I am enter­ing the tribe of the crone, the wiz­ened women around us who have jour­neyed beyond girl­hood, maid­en­hood and arrived to the full moon of their years. There is a new fury within me, a new deter­mi­na­tion to own the story, the life and the body that is mine.  I may not yet be able to write a love let­ter to my body, but I can at least begin to tell the tale that is mine to tell. Per­haps in the telling the love will some­day  be found. Fake it til you make it has not worked out for me.  Tell it ’til I own it is more my style. In the moon­lit spaces among the  crones and  sis­ter­hood is where I will tell it.

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I am gone camp­ing this week. I think it is not a coin­ci­dence that I work up the courage to post this as I am about to leave town!! I may have moments of access to the net on my phone. I’ll check in for your com­ments and respond when pos­si­ble. I’d love to hear how oth­ers are get­ting along with their bod­ies. Espe­cially those read­ers who have dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ships with their body as I do. Your story matters!