I have never once in my life encountered patience in a consumer product.
I’ve barely encountered it in a man.
The product images are artfully vague. A sleek, curved shape in iridescent material, lit like a perfume ad. No dimensions or comparison photos of it resting in someone’s hand for scale.
The brand name is something I’ve never heard of.
Zero reviews.
Zero purchases.
$99.99.
I add it to the cart. I stare at the checkout screen. The little orange button.
Complete Purchase.
I put my phone face-down on my stomach and stare at the ceiling some more.
When was the last time I felt good in my own body, good in a way that had nothing to do with productivity or output or earning the right to exist? I come up empty.
The memory is there, somewhere, buried under two years of survival math and the specific exhaustion of being your own pack mule.
I know it’s there the way I know the bottom of the ocean is there.
Accessible in theory.
Would require equipment I don’t currently possess.
I look at my phone again as my thumb hovers over the orange button.
I remember something Gram told me one time, after she bought me a gift card to a local masseuse on a particularly bad back day.
Maisie Hayes, the Lord gave you a body and He expects you to enjoy living in it. That’s just good stewardship.
Gram has a way of making everything sound like scripture, even the stuff that absolutely was not.
I tapComplete Purchase.
The screen loads.
The little spinning wheel doesits thing.
A confirmation email slides into my inbox with a cheerfulYour order is on its way!and an estimated delivery window of three to five business days.
My heart is pounding. Which is absurd. I’ve just bought a massager—amassager—for less than the cost of my last shea butter order, and my body is reacting like I’ve signed a lease on a new apartment.
My face is warm. I can feel the wine in my cheeks and the adrenaline everywhere else, a fizzy, reckless current running through all that exhaustion like someone plugged a string of Christmas lights into a dead outlet and they flickered on anyway.
I delete my browser history—and the purchase confirmation email along with it.
Sure, I live alone. There’s no one here to see my phone and raise an eyebrow.
But I delete it all anyway, as if that’ll wipe clean the shame.
I haul myself off the floor, and my back registers its formal complaint with every inch of altitude gained.
The mixing bowl is still on the worktable, the scrub starting to set up around the edges.
