The woman I used to be...

Comparing yourself to others is hard. Comparing yourself to who YOU used to be is even harder. And I should know...

It’s 5am am in Tokyo and I can’t sleep.  Outside our hotel window the city sits in blackness. There is no beating neon, no soft rush of traffic, not even the gentle footsteps of another jet-lagged tourist making their way down the corridor in search of caffeine. It is, in other words, perfection.

I have always loved this hour. It feels safe and reassuring; like a secret hand squeeze between me and the world. Come on out, it whispers. The void is yours. It is, I decide, a very good time to get naked.

On the 17th floor of our hotel is an onsen. An onsen is basically a very hot pool of water where the Japanese sit about mopping their brows with damp towels, letting their breasts and bits float about like lily pads on the water’s surface. 

I turn 45 in a few days time. This trip was booked in anticipation of that birthday. I haven’t been looking forward to turning 45. But I have been looking forward to having an onsen.

Except there is a problem. A rather big one, as it happens. The onsen requires you are naked. The woman at reception tells me this whilst smiling and nodding her head.

I am not smiling.

‘Well, that’s it!’ I hiss to my husband as we take the elevator up to our room. ‘We can’t have one now.” 

We have been together so long there is no need to articulate the obvious: that shame, age and a cultural condition called ‘being British’ won’t allow it. 

I have also gained 7 kg in the last year. My body feels heavy. It puckers in places I did not know one could pucker. I have little rolls under the band of my bra. Sometimes I’ll be in the shower and feel a new hummock of flesh where there never used to be one. It is, in short, a body not ready for public consumption.

But it’s 5 am now and the chances of anyone being up there seems, well, incredibly slim. So I pull off my night dress, place the teeny tiny kimono that has been left on the edge of the chair for me and make my way up.