I Took a "Spiritual Bath" and Ended Up Crying About a Spatula

The spiritual bath recipe I found online required: - Epsom salt (got it) - Rose petals (from my sad, half-dead rosebush, but fine) - Florida water (improvised with actual water and some optimism) - White candles (I had birthday candles, whatever) - Clear intentions

The clear intentions were where everything went sideways.

"Meditate on what you'd like to release," the article said. "Let the water carry away what no longer serves you."

Simple. Easy. I was going to release... I don't know. Stress? Anxiety? The persistent feeling that I'm failing at everything while somehow also not trying hard enough?

I lit my birthday candles. I got in the bath. I closed my eyes.

And immediately thought about a spatula.

Not metaphorically. An actual spatula. The red silicone one my ex-husband took when he moved out because it was "his" even though I bought it and he never cooked anything except frozen pizza.

Suddenly, I was furious about the spatula.

That was MY spatula. I have to buy a new spatula now. Why didn't I fight harder for the spatula? Why did I let him take everything that mattered and also everything that didn't matter because I just wanted him to LEAVE and now I can't even flip pancakes correctly—

Reader, I sobbed in that bathtub for forty-five minutes.

Not about my marriage. Not about the betrayal or the loneliness or the fear. About the SPATULA. And the throw pillows he insisted on that I hated but kept for seven years. And the vegetable peeler that was the wrong shape but he bought it so I couldn't replace it. And every tiny, stupid thing I gave up because fighting felt like too much work.

By the time the water got cold, I had cried about: - The spatula - A lamp - The way he pronounced "supposedly" - My 30s - A specific Tuesday in 2019 that I barely remembered but apparently still had feelings about - My grandmother's risotto (again) - The fact that I'll never be the person I was at 28 - Also the spatula again, because apparently we weren't done

This was not the dignified spiritual experience I had planned.

But here's the thing: I felt better.

Not because the bath was magic. Because grief is a weird little hoarder that stores random crap in boxes you forget about until you open them. And sometimes those boxes are labeled "spatula" even though they're actually labeled "the entire decade I lost to a relationship that wasn't working."

The bath didn't carry away my stress.

It gave me space to finally be ridiculous about my losses. To cry about the small things because the big things were too big to look at directly.

That's the secret of ritual, I think. We don't do it because the candles are magic or the rose petals have power. We do it because we're so rarely allowed to fall apart. We need the structure, the container, the excuse.

"I'm not crying in the bathtub because I'm broken," we can tell ourselves. "I'm doing a ritual."

Same thing, probably.

Next time, I'm going to set an intention to release my feelings about a whisk.

I'll keep you posted.