The Day the Divorce Was Final, She Booked the Longest Session

My name is Xincheng Gu (alias). The day my divorce was finalised, the sky was offensively bright, and I stood on the courthouse steps with suddenly nowhere to go — home too empty, friends would require talking. In truth I had submitted my application a fortnight earlier and kept putting off confirming it, the way I had dragged the tail of that marriage. That day I finally sent the confirmation. Applications are reviewed and places are limited; by evening the approval had come, and the address — never public — was sent to my phone alone. I drove there with swollen eyes and, strangely, steady hands. At last, one thing in my life was simply, clearly mine.

Nobody asked me a single question when I arrived. Slippers at my feet, my shoes taken softly away, a cup of warm tea placed in my hands. I changed without lifting a finger; the robe settled warm on my shoulders. The bath water was hot, petals floating on its surface, and I soaked for a long time, until the steam had fogged the mirror completely; the bathing was attended throughout, the temperature asked after again and again. Standing in that warm water I cried for the first time that day — quietly, without a sound. It was the first moment in years when nothing was required of me except to be looked after.

Lying down, warmth covered my scalp first, like a hand gently holding my scattered thoughts still. Then the warm, silky Nuru liquid spread slowly along my shoulders and back, gliding over a waist that had been criticised for years, down legs that had curled tight through sleepless nights, all the way to the soles of my feet and my toes. I cried more than once in that session. Nobody consoled me and nobody probed; a towel was simply moved closer when I sobbed, the temperature raised a little. Slowly my breathing settled, and my body sank, inch by inch. From the crown of my head to my toes, I felt gathered up whole — not picked over, not found wanting. Held.

The hardest thing to ask for was the final passage: the Yoni private care. In my marriage this body had been ignored and criticised, and I was almost afraid of anyone coming near it again. Yet I longed, unmistakably, to know whether it could still be treated gently. I stated my terms plainly first: stoppable at any moment, no explanations owed. The confirmation was light and steady, and every approach was spoken aloud before it came. As warmth and patience opened me, little by little, the strongest feeling was not what I had feared at all. It was respect — the simple, enormous discovery that a body does not need to earn gentleness by being younger, or thinner, or still somebody's wife. This body was being tended slowly, ceremoniously, without a shadow of judgement. Under the blanket my shoulders shook with crying — and when it passed, I felt a full stop finally land at the end of a long sentence.

Walking out of that courthouse, the papers in my hand had felt frighteningly light — years of marriage, reduced to a few thin pages. That evening's weight was the opposite of those pages: a thick robe, a heavy blanket, warmth lying honestly on my skin, even a teacup with a reassuring heft to it. When the work reached my shoulders I cried hardest; everything I had swallowed in that marriage seemed stored beneath my shoulder blades, and it melted, inch by inch, and left by way of my tears. Nobody fussed with tissues around me. A towel was simply placed within my reach, and half a step of space given back, while I cried myself out. That unintrusive company understood me better than any consolation could have. I did not need rescuing. I needed one place to cry myself back to myself, quietly.

At the end I finished my warm water and wrote a small card in the rest area, one line only: from today, I am kind to myself first. When I left, dusk was coming down, and it was the most dignified day I had had in years. I booked again, and I asked about the travelling ritual, too. Next month I am taking a few days alone in Palm Springs, and I want this feeling of being respected to travel with me — to walk beside me, steadily, through the first stretch of my new life.

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