I'm Molting, I'm Molting...

What a world! I settled down in the tub tonight with a wonderful glass of red wine and with steam wafting upwards from the surface of the water. It was the first relaxing thing I've done for myself in quite some time. I needed it really bad.

After lounging like Darryl Hannah in Splash for about twenty minutes, I started to itch--which always seems to happen when I'm in hot water (the literal kind, not the metaphorical kind). I eventually employed the super-scratchy loofah. This is the funny thing about itches--they spread. So I'm scratching my belly, then my chest, then armpits, elbows and my neck. Then thighs, shins, calves and heels. And pretty much everything in between. It felt wonderful. I was like that cat that never tires of being scratched behind the ears, or on that one specific spot on her back. I must have lost four layers of skin. Like being reborn. I feel like a new person.

Like I rubbed away a whole history of things I've been through. Like I rubbed away summer, winter, and fall, Christmas, New Year's and Thanksgiving, just like that. Like I rubbed away the skin he touched. And the skin he didn't touch. And I'm loofah-ing it all away, wondering if this is how I wash him away, wash my hurt away. But actually, I think not. Those kinds of things are more than skin deep.

But on the bright side, now my skin will be new and soft and fresh for a day before it goes back to being scaly and dry like before. It will be touchable. It might even regain the glow it has had at certain points. Like lemondrops sucked to translusence? Maybe.