Bubbly Bubbly

 I still don't like bubble baths. 

But here's the deal: the stress of work has me taking bubble baths. Mr. Bubble is not involved; I've advanced to using less aggressive bubble bath, such as Bath & Body Works shower gel to get some sudsy bubbles. Or maybe my skin and vagina are tougher after all these years, less sensitive due to time and age. 

I find myself taking a bubble bath almost every night before I go to bed. I don't last very long in it - maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Our bathtub isn't very big, so I can't submerge my full body simultaneously: either my legs and lower body are submerged and my upper body hangs out, or I can soak myself up to the neck with my feet propped against the bathtub/shower wall, my legs hanging out until my thighs. The downside of being six-feet tall in a tub built for a child or petite person.

When I took that first bath six weeks ago, I'm pretty sure that it was the first bath I had taken since 2014. From 2015 to 2019, I lived in a downtown apartment that had only a shower, which I was completely happy with as I still carried the trauma of Mr. Bubble and the grossness of sitting in my own dirty bathwater. I occasionally took a bath in the house that I owned from 2008 to 2014, but it was usually when I had pulled a muscle playing sand volleyball or a pickup game of basketball, and I would always take a shower before taking a bath, then rinse off after taking the bath. I essentially used more water than a family of four did in an entire month just for one bath.

But after more than nine years of having my last solo bath, I decided to give it a whirl. I was sore from playing an especially aggressive match of pickleball the day before, my nerves were frayed from several stressful months of work, and it was so cold outside that my bones hurt. And I thought, what if? What if a bath can soothe me like it does for so many other people? 

So I lit the candles we have in the bathroom, cranked the tap water to as hot as it would go, dumped some Frosted Snowball Coconut shower gel in the water, and tentatively climbed into the tub - completely terrified that I'd slip, break my neck, and my husband would find my naked, bloated body when he returned home. 

I didn't slip and somehow managed make it into the water unscathed and unscalded, the water hot but not melt-my-skin-off hot. And I soaked in a tub for the first time in years. I lasted for about eight minutes, which I took as a personal triumphant. When I carefully crawled out - still concerned about slipping and falling on my way out of the tub - I realized that it was something that I could do again. I didn't take a pre-bath shower or a post-bath shower, I had no allergic reactions to the suds, and I felt a little calmer (and prunier, with my fingertips puckered and overemphasizing my fingerprints). My brain felt refreshingly empty. 

Six weeks later, I'm now experimenting with different bath enhancements. Do I like bath bombs? (No) Do I like bath salt? (Nope) How about a little music while I relax? (Sometimes) I avoid taking my phone or a book into the bath with me. To a certain extent, it's my variation of meditation, focusing on emptying my thoughts and stress so that I'm empty when I gingerly crawl out of the tub. My next bath experiment is likely to install some sort of handrail so that I can appease my anxiety of slipping and sliding to my wet, naked death in a bathtub...