Day 40 Endorphin Junkie

Several years ago, before a trip to Mexico, I decided to have my legs professionally waxed. I have nothing against shaving, but I’ve got a raised pigmented mole on my left shin that I tend to forget about. I’ve cut the top off that thing so many times, it now looks like a little brown target, which you’d think might help me remember, but doesn’t. I figured it would be nice to vacation without a bloody scab.

Well, that was a deeply enlightening spa experience I’m in no hurry to repeat, thank you very much. Lovely result, but that poor esthetician was dodging random kicks to the head and I’m pretty sure I was offering to sign a confession, any confession, by the end. Turns out I need to be in control of the pain myself.

So I do my own waxing. Now that I’ve reached the age when, as Janette Barber’s famous quote goes, “they’re not chin hairs, they’re stray eyebrows,” it’s a top-to-toe deal. “Your face feels so smooth and woman-like,” my husband tells me afterwards, with all sincerity.

And you know what hurts the most? (No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Hello, natural childbirth times three.) It’s the top of the feet. Oh, come on. I’m not the only one with periodic bouts of hobbit-foot. You know what I’m talking about. Or if you don’t you either should, or you will. Somehow the skin over the feet and ankles is so thin, it produces a spectacularly bright sort of pain when the hairs rip free.

But afterwards? It’s not just the smooth, exfoliated skin. It’s an endorphin rush, the body celebrating “I suffered, and I survived!”

I wonder if that’s not part of the draw of Bikram yoga, for me. I’ve never been one to do anything the easy way. Ten years of pregnancy and/or lactation. 14 years of homeschooling. 23 years, coming up, of marriage. In fact, if there’s a hard way, a long way, or a wrong way, I’ve probably taken it. (I chose to be a writer, after all. And not just any writer – for years, I wrote for pet magazines and church magazines. The two lowest-paying segments of the freelance market. Good job.)

But there is satisfaction in doing something really, really difficult. (I once wrote a piece on how to deal with masturbation in cats. It’s true. I’m not saying it was a good story, but it was assigned, I got the information, the interviews, and met my deadline. Thank goodness the editors saw reason and killed it before the issue went to print.)

There’s nothing like the sensation at the end of class, when I’m lying in Savasana – Corpse Pose – drenched with sweat, swimming in endorphins, limp, limber and loose.

I’ve suffered, I’ve pushed through, and I’ve survived. And I’m stronger for it.

Savasana