I woke up at 3:00 AM — a fairly regular occurrence for me — and scheduled a massage. Do I normally get massages? No. Pretty sure my last one came courtesy of a work trip to a golf resort a few years ago. But thanks to being relegated to my apartment by below zero temperatures, unrelenting snow, and what increasingly feels like a midlife crisis that’s left me feeling like a boat bobbing along without direction, my body feels like garbage. This is my fault. I’m sitting around, eating potato chips, and consuming content when I should be regularly sweeping my apartment and selecting one of the millions of YouTube workouts on offer at least four times a week because, I don’t know? Mental spiraling and self-help maxims are easier than getting up and doing stuff, even though I know better.
Your girl needs a break. From her self. Not like my actual self but the me in my brain who won’t shut the fuck up. So, in an hour and a half, I will be on a massage table because I need a hard, tangible reset. Someone literally putting hands on me and working some of whatever this is out of my system.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite tracks from Wale’s 2007 Mixtape About Nothing: “The Vacation.”(1) In which he uses a sample from a Seinfeld episode about vacating from oneself. It’s exactly what I need.
(1) Ahh. 2007. Remember when Wale was good? And ‘hope’ was in vogue?
The Skinny Black Girl 