Funny, the fancy language doesn't make me like them any more.
I've been quite religious about staying out of the sun and wearing sunscreen since my early twenties. I feel like the crows' feet and sun damage are quite under control, thank you very much. But these forehead lines? There's nothing I can do about them, unless I find a way to blunt my emotional response to life's events--which, if you know me, you know is asking the impossible. I'm demonstrative. I huff and puff and if I'm in a really bad mood I'll try to blow your house down. Just kidding. But seriously, I can't stop being me. Enter Botox.
A little shot here, a little there and voila! No more hyper mobile facial muscles. No more deep furrows that make me look years older than my actual age. Just a perfectly calm, serene, unlined face. I think about it all the time, how much better I'd look. Maybe then I'd stop critiquing my appearance in the mirror and just be happy with my reflection. Maybe I'd see what's pretty about my face instead of honing in on the imperfections. Maybe, I think, then my critical ego-mind would stop giving me that seductively poisonous line: "you'd be so pretty, if only..."
The fact that my husband is an opthalmic surgeon trained in Botox injection probably makes this possibility seem more attractive. And attainable. After all, I can skip the trip to the dermatologist and the hefty fee. All he'd have to do is bring a little bit home and fix me up at our kitchen table. So even though I'm months away from actually being able to use the stuff (you can't be pregnant or nursing), I've started working on him.
Strange thing is, my husband has not responded to any of my pleading. It's like he can't hear me or something, or at least, he pretends not to. Now, I've been married to him long enough to know that he's a) not deaf and b) has an opinion on everything, so I know he has something to say, he's just not saying it. Which usually means he hasn't formulated the words for it quite yet. So I wait. And repeat myself. Again and again. Still nothing.
This morning I started in about the Botox once more, but then I thought, maybe it's time to probe this resistance a bit. Find out why he's mum. "Do you not want me to do Botox, baby? Is that why you don't say anything when I talk about it?"
"You look the way God made you to look," he said softly. "I don't want that to change."
Enough said.
If only we could see ourselves through the eyes of those who love us. We are already beautiful. Already perfect. Botox might, and probably would, change my face. And he doesn't want it to change. He doesn't want it to be less expressive or demonstrative or in any way less, well, me.
So from now on, when I look in the mirror, I'm going to try and see myself the way he sees me. Pretty, without the "if only." Beautiful, without the "but."
At least until my fortieth birthday.
Unadulterated, un-self-conscious joy
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
ReplyDelete"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
-Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
:)
Jen--This is one of my FAVORITE stories. Thank you so much for posting this. Lots of love as always!
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