Why I Never Let Anyone Do Anything For Me

Insights from the massage table

Photo by Hassan OUAJBIR on Unsplash

We lie face down on the massage table. My body and I. My body, which is hurting all the time now. A permanent yoke across the shoulders from the burden of trying to survive as a creative person in a world that (largely) doesn’t give a fuck about art.

It’s not the world’s fault. It’s me. The way I sit, despite an expensive back-friendly chair. The way I slip into hyperfocus, failing to notice my 30-minute timer ding me into a movement break, and three hours later, emerging from a river of words into a sea of pain. And consequences. Sometimes a two-day headache. Sometimes cervicogenic (neck-created) vertigo. No writing happens then. This is nature’s corrective move when you’re living out of balance.

So I’m trying to make peace with my body. And in the middle of what should be a working afternoon, my body and I lie down for a massage. Directly below the hole where the face goes: brass singing bowl.

“Is that a bowl for catching the tears?” I joke.

Marta’s softly accented voice as she pulls a warm towel across my shoulders:

“Oh darling,” she says. “If you want.”

And immediately, I want.

I don’t cry, though. The very thought is humiliating. I’m the strong one. Capable. I do everything myself, tile bathrooms, build furniture, and process trauma. DIY to the core. I learned years ago that it’s not safe to lean on other people: when you’re carrying big stuff, most folk can’t take it. They collapse under the weight or say things that make it worse, then step away, and you’re sobbing in a heap on the floor, doubly abandoned. It’s nearly nineteen years since I learned the powerful process that gave me emotional self-regulation. Since then, with relief, I offload my shit alone.

But my body is telling a story of its own. My body is building pain like a piece of art. Starting in the spine and radiating outwards like briars clambering up a crucifix.

Enough to bring me here, to the massage table, where Marta asks me to take deep breaths and release them. Where Marta, sensing my armour, says,

“This is your time to receive.”

Now that damn singing bowl is going to catch some tears.

Receive, you say. Ah, that thing that I am famously bad at. Ask, and it is given? Not in that childhood home. So I learned not to ask. Internalised that old corner shop sign, “Please don’t ask for credit as a refusal often offends.” I wasn’t offended by my mother’s refusals, but wounded. Feeling you have no value is not something you want reinforced. So you learn not to ask.

Earlier this year, my son and his pregnant partner were driving across France in sub-zero temperatures. They were planning to sleep overnight (without heat) in their tiny van. Their blankets were wet. Their budget is tight. So while they made miles, I researched, then paid for (out of my seemingly bottomless debt) an overnight stay en route. My son’s 31.

But I’ll never leave offspring of mine the way mum left me, at 16, stranded in Yorkshire on New Year’s Day, having sprained my ankle on a 40-mile hike, the ancient support car kaput. My boyfriend and I pooled what money we had for hot food in the pub and slept in the broken-down car. The car needed a part and would not be repaired for days. We were down to pennies. From a phone box, hoping that just this once she’d come through, I rang my Mum and told her our dire situation. Steeling myself against the no, I asked if she’d drive up to get us. And of course, the No came. “Have fun getting back,” she said. “I’m sure it will be an adventure.” To her 16-year-old daughter. I can’t imagine doing the same.

So asking has long been tough, but there’s no asking here. I didn’t ask for a massage; I booked one, paid for it; this isn’t about a fear of refusal. So what about “This is your time to receive” makes me cry?

Because long, long ago, I found out I had shut that off too. In that first bad marriage, there was no receiving. I gave, and I gave, to my husband and children, until I had nothing left for myself. Emptied and squeezed until the inside collapses, and nothing could fill it. When I first started healing myself, and visualised what was inside, what was under my skin, it was tar. Thick black tar, with no space for light or air. No space to receive.

Did this explain the sex? My first thought when Marta said, “This is your time to receive,” was Oh, the sex. When my brand new second husband and I returned from our tantric sex retreat in Costa Rica, we hit an issue of which I’d previously been unaware because frankly, no man had really gone there for any length of time. Yep, you know what I’m saying. Sure, they’d “gone there.” But not for long. I’d never let them.

What Tantric sex teaches is balance, yin and yang. You and your lover are equals: in a heterosexual relationship, god and goddess. Your pleasure and his are equally framed. Lovers switch giving and receiving; this is how you extend pleasure over hours, into days, reaching states that are more than borderline spiritual: the sense of yourself as a physical being can melt away. And in a heterosexual couple, since the man must delay any one-and-done completion, the woman may need to get very comfortable with receiving.

But messed-up situations from my past made receiving pretty hard. That focus on me: no thanks. I felt under the spotlight. Manipulated, even. Surrender to pleasure felt dangerous, scarily vulnerable; no, I would not lose control. In the bedroom, give, give, give had long been my answer. I knew what I was doing; how to change a man’s mind, divert his intentions and put myself back in the driving seat.

Fun fact: a fellow writer I had a wild weekend with, years ago, wanted to repeat the experience, and when I said no, he offered me £500 to repeat the blowjob. My friend, it was a free service only, and not for douchebags. When I pointed out that I wasn’t a prostitute, he asked me if I could teach my technique to his girlfriend. Can you even imagine how that would have gone?

Douches aside, I used these skills for self-protection. Someone starts going down? You know what to grab, and exactly what to do to switch tracks. Marked safe from intimacy ✅.

So, post Costa Rica, this was a problem to tackle.

Eventually, by playing certain tricks on myself, adopting certain mental narratives, I learned to receive. But never me as me. Only me in certain make-believe roles. Lady Chatterley with Mellors. Never Ros. Ros doesn’t receive. Ros keeps her armour on.

This has a wider resonance. The evidence from my life is that for long stretches at a time, I pinch myself off from receiving. Yes, I’ve received awards, recognition and then, oop! comes the attention, the uncomfortable focus on me. And maybe there’s part of me that, thanks to my childhood, doesn’t feel deserving. This is something I’m actively working to change.

After the massage, I asked Marta what oil she used. She said peppermint and lavender, standard relaxation. What the smell had reminded me of was eucalyptus, the trees that populated the hills above Berkeley where I lived when I was seven. The eucalyptus-scented hot road I’d walk up from where I was dropped by the yellow school bus to the house with my mum sunbathing on the balcony over the garage. The poodle called Prince, the grand piano in the cool marble hall and jewel-coloured hummingbirds haunting the porch. This thought: the last time I was happy.

Which was shocking, unexpected, not true. But I also get it. That was the last time I was happy through and through. At seven, I was still fully blended with my inner being, that ineffable joy that all of us are born with. “Before life got complicated,” I said to Marta. Which put me on the edge of tears again. “Heavenly, seasonless California,” as I wrote in the sequence ‘Lafayette Super 8’ two decades ago.

All these things. My body’s got so much to say to me right now. And I get it, body, I do. I’ve lived a lot in my head, ignoring your wisdom. But you’re right, for sure. Getting re-blended with my joyful inner being is long overdue.

This is my time to receive.

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Want to help me receive without initiating terrifying acts of intimacy? Here’s how.

❤️ Light the heart — it costs nothing and means more than you’d think.

✌️ If ‘Lafayette Super 8’ caught your attention, it lives in How Things Are on Thursday — grab a copy or leave a review.

And if you want more of this, plus want me to keep writing in the face of absolutely ridiculous obstacles:

Paid subscribers are keeping me fed and housed right now, and I’m grateful.

Registration is also open for our April 17th session: “I Deserve to Be Comfortable and Happy.” Say that out loud. If it doesn’t feel true — come.

Now, over to you

1. Do you struggle to receive?

2. Have you ever had a breakthrough on a massage table?

3. Do you remember the last time you were fully blended with joy as a child?