manila folders

It seems endless; I'm scanning six years' worth of client files onto my computer, I'm surrounded by manila folders, swathes of discarded treatment notes, and the stack of remaining files is as high as my chair. Pages and pages of my writing documenting hours of touching, of pain and injury and stress and softening and loosening and healing. People's health histories, their lists of medications and diagnoses and fractures and hours of sleep and glasses of water drunk and births by caesarean. It's very intimate, some of it's dear to me, but mostly it feels heavy. Like baggage. I have to keep each of these documents for 16 years.
It's bittersweet work; I'm downsizing the amount I have to schlepp at the next move, even if it's just by two or three boxes, but I'm also reminded of the loveliest of clients, many of whom became very dear to me and aren't in my life anymore. They're now a file on my computer that contains documentation of the techniques I used and their aches and ailments, but that's just the surface, just something to jog the memory of all the conversations, the laughter, the tears and insights and heartaches and teasing and stories and house calls and gifts and healing and wisdom. I love the personal rituals that developed - I would let the Sikh man go into the treatment room first without me so he could take off his turban and cover his hair with a cap, I would help out the seniors with bras and wigs and shoes with curly elastic laces, unasked. I would know which clients were just going to strip right away, which ones wanted eye covers or abdominal pillows or shoulder pads, which were going to wait till they relaxed on the table before telling me their aches and pains. One client asked me for a weight update each week and then gave me his. Some clients I miss dearly.
The years I massaged a quite small woman my age while she went through multiple failed pregnancies and countless fertility treatments and all that heartache and desire. She was well and truly pregnant in her second trimester with her very last viable egg the last time I saw her and I would so have loved to have seen her with her long awaited baby.
And I put to rest my dear old diva, a true dame, in her 80's with a blonde bob and silk scarf and rings that were way too large on her skeletal hands. She showed up wearing a bumblebee dress one day, brought me back macadamia nuts from hawaii, told me she'd never had her heart broken. Except for when her husband died, and she didn't tell me the the story of that day until over a year after we met. She told me she loved me and I always worked over her clothes because of her friable crepe paper skin and gave her extra time and never treated her like a frail or cute 'little old lady'. We kept talk about my breakup to a minimum but one day shortly after, as I was working on her biceps, she looked long and thoughtfully at me and mentioned softly how sad I looked. I watched her body die via her symptoms reported on her bi monthly, dizziness, tiredness, dehydration, her systems shutting down. I should have called her during a long absence and then a coworker found her obituary in the paper. I miss her.
And a man who is a construction worker and labourer who's dream job had been to be a psychologist and who had his swiss ancestral family crest tattooed on him and had the driest sassiest most sarcastic sense of humour - "I bet your ability to test the doneness of a steak is uncanny". His father died a long slow death during our time together, something he would report on in a few short sentences, usually mentioning something disdainful about the family politics. He liked that I was a bush girl and one day arrived for his massage carrying a box full of wrapped up skulls - beaver, lynx, bear. "You're the only one weird enough to be excited about this stuff." He got all steamed up when he heard of me leaving and stormed in for his last massage; the door wasn't even shut before he was mouthing the words "what the fuck do you think you're doing?! You can't leave." He didn't know what to do with himself at the end of that treatment, looked like he wanted to wrap his arms around me, tell me what I meant to him but didn't know the words, cry, something. Instead he said, "have a nice life," with a mix of bitterness and loss, and left. I felt similar things as him, I think.
There was A the Aussie, my age, lanky, hairy, jovial, silly in a too many concussions kind of way. Said "hurts like buggery," way too much, had terrible gas, holey underwear, and rawhide instead of  muscles. I never figured it out why but his tissue was not pliable in any way - I had to use elbows, which he loved, and hated, and he would yell and curse at the top of his lungs, and to trick his brain with reverse physchology  yelled "Oh my god I love it when you do that keep going!!!!" I coached him through online dating and he got to know the candidates in my love life at the time through my descriptions and I got to read the texts to the girl that ditched him a short while later and had to agree that he was being a self centred bore. I drove him home once when he was carless in the winter, he taught me about nine inch nails, he did the 30 day yoga challenge a few times over, quite drinking while I knew him, though the first time I treated him he had been in the drunk tank the night before.  I heard he had a big car accident after I left. I feel like I'll run into him again.
There was a cop who had gone through a divorce a couple years earlier who could never fully relax on the table and would tell me of the crimes and deaths in town that hadn't made the news, of his motorcycle trips, of his sons' adventures as linesman, and rural rcmp respectively. Or give me updates on his garden, one time going so far as to show up at the clinic while on duty, just to bring me a bag of fresh pole beans that he grew. He gave me a gift certificate, card and money as a goodbye present.
The gorgeous senior with purple lacy underwear with whom I clicked. I wish I could hang out with her more. And there were two middle aged women each with much wisdom and presence - we clicked too. Conversations on daughters, raising and being them.
There were caravan theater actors and armstrong farmers and clowns and witches and bullies and beekeepers and seniors and addicts and paraplegics and office workers and cowboys. I heard the trauma of car and bike accidents and chronic pain and family strife and breakups and births and deaths and admissions of not actually wanting to be with the girlfriend, would rather be quitting that good job and travelling france. Stories of war vets and of a grandfather with a peg leg in which he stored candies.  Of how much spending money the rich priviledged teenager had gotten on the latest vacation. Heard about growing up in afghanistan and of drunken shenanigans on the weekend. I watched clients gain weight, lose weight, watched them go through keto diets and cleanses and months of sobriety, sleepless nights and digestive turmoil and divorce. I learned fishing tips, gardening advice, learned about agricultural irrigation, importing queen bees, how to make basil ice creams from scratch, heard about the caterer's masterpiece canoe filled with food, law school exams, thesis papers, fly tying and cedar canoe building.
I was told that I had magic hands, that my hands were goddamn cold, that I could slay a man with my little pinkie. I was called little and cute and young and hippy. I was told that my work was probably a placebo and I've been told that my massage table was someone's happy place. I've been told that I can stop that with my elbow anytime now and that I could go way deeper, "you won't hurt me". I was told, "I've never even told my wife that," and been called bitch, lovingly, and been asked out. I've had clients try to figure me out and get under the professional exterior. "What are you hiding? Why are you in this town? What are you afraid of and what holds you back?" The light questions. The same client told me that the answer to life was sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Another was a very alive and intelligent man in rehab, though my guess is that it was going to take more than one session in there. He clearly had the time of his life whenever he drank, telling me stories of waking up to find himself in Italy. He started guessing what my addiction was, "Champagne and pills? No? Shopping? No no, I know. You're a love junky aren't you?"
I've had the worst cramps of my life during treatment, I've come to the table with four hours' sleep due to wild adventures with the gorgeous young hamish, or due to fighting all night with john. I've had anxiety attacks and have cried into the corner of the sheet while the client was face down and I've  laughed so hard I've cried. I've come to work immediately after riding all morning and during a breakup and during falling in love and while my father was having a heart attack and I was on the phone with the edmonton police during the space between clients trying to determine whether he was alive or not and not knowing.
Some clients gave so much and others took and many left a mark. I think about them a lot. And I have this uncomfortable feeling that I stepped out of their lives, out of our relationships, to pursue my own selfish needs and passions, that I left them hanging. That I didn't take our relationship seriously enough.  Especially the ones that felt kindred and the ones who felt they had found some sort of healing through me.