Who Am I?

It’s been an odd week for me. I’m surrounded by massage therapists but I don’t feel like I belong here. I’m not currently a practicing MT and I feel disjointed, disconnected, possibly even discombobulated. I’m interested in sessions that are more about thinking about massage than doing massage (so I may be skipping the morning session today on forearm and arm pain. Useful but I just can’t seem to get excited about it.)

When I became a massage therapist, I left a career that had also defined me for almost 20 years and I found that disorienting for a while too. I get a lot of satisfaction out of my professional life. I worked hard in both professions to improve my skills and my professionalism. In both cases I was active in professional societies. I took (and take) pride in the fact that people appreciated my work. So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised by how disjointed I feel when I’m not living the MT life, especially when surrounded by massage therapists.

I still am an MT, technically, but I’m not practicing. I gave my sister a foot rub last Saturday but that’s the first person I’ve rubbed since the end of July. What does it mean to be a massage therapist who isn’t massaging?

I have a friend in Texas who, like me, studied journalism in college. Like me, she started a writing job upon graduation. Unlike me, she stepped away from it a few years later to accommodate her husband’s job and then the arrival of her children.

I remember her saying she was no longer a writer. And I corrected her. The skill, the background, the relationship to words, and the very attitude necessary to be a writer still lived within her. No one was paying her to write but she still is a writer in my mind, even 20+ years later.

I know by the same standard, I still am a massage therapist. I still think like an MT. I still care like an MT. The knowledge, the experience, the attitude still live inside me. So by the standards outlined above, I’m still an MT.

But can I tell you a little secret? I don’t actually have an urge to rub someone. I was sure I would. I was sure by this point -- 6 weeks after my last massage -- I’d have twitchy hands, anxious to rub any one or any thing! I don’t and I don’t quite understand that.

I love and respect the life of an MT but I will also admit that it can be hard, draining, and frustrating sometimes. It’s not a lavender-scented float through life, riding the love waves from my satisfied customers. (darn it) It’s…….work. And some part of me is, frankly, happy to be able to walk away from it for 6 months.

But I still feel like I lost a point on my internal compass by stepping away. I lost a filter, a lens through which I knew myself.

I’m a little embarrassed by all this. I feel like my internal self-ness should be centered and grounded in something more enduring and essential than my job. But that job engages huge swaths of my mental energies. I suppose if my husband passes before I do I’ll experience something similar because my marriage engages huge swaths of my emotional energies.

So, this is normal. Right? Right?