Nov 4: The Weight of a Line

Looks harmless enough

My dilemma today: should I buy the Groupon Botox deal for 51% off before it expires in a few hours? It's a good deal. Only $59 for ten units, and I really only want to get rid of one line. Just one. Seems like a good price to me and worth it, except for all those reasons other people give for why I shouldn't.

I posed the question on my wall on Facebook, and overwhelmingly my friends voted the idea down. Mostly they said flattering things about my lovely face, but this isn't about vanity. I'm not--I don't think--all that vain. I was never one of the pretty girls. Smart, yes. Even a jock in high school. And I've got tons of empathy, so people like to talk to me. But I've never relied on my good looks for anything; I'm all to aware of the limitations. And it's OK. I'm happy with smart and empathic. The Botox isn't about making myself pretty.

I realize, as a couple of friends pointed out, it's kind of crazy to consider injecting a lethal poison into my face. But any drug is lethal if ingested or injected in lethal doses. It's not like I'm going to eat a jar of spoiled home-canned green beans. I know better than that.

But the potential side effects do cause me to pause. The Groupon offer warns that "Botox may cause serious side effects that can be life threatening, including problems swallowing, speaking, or breathing." I certainly don't need to swallow or talk, but the whole breathing thing should continue indefinitely. I didn't even go to the link that would take me to more side effects. Redheads are notoriously unpredictable when it comes to drugs. Anesthesiologists hate to see us on the surgery table, and I'm their worst nightmare. I almost died when I had back surgery. That anesthesiologist was crying when he came to visit me and apologize after the surgery. Then again, the only side effect might be muscle paralysis between my eyebrows, right where I want it.

And that's the only place I want it. Right between my eyebrows. I have a frown line there, one that gets worse every year. And I don't want it. I call it my cancer line. It first started shortly after LtColEx was diagnosed with cancer. He was diagnosed early in the year, but he didn't undergo surgery for another six months, even though he was only 50 and the cancer was aggressive. But I don't need to tell that story. This is about my frown line.

The frown line started sometime during those months of waiting. I could feel it, like a weight between my eyes that got heavier and heavier. A close friend even pointed it out. "You've got a frown line that you didn't have before LtColEx was diagnosed with cancer," he said. I already knew though; I'd noticed it. He just corroborated that other people could see it there too. My worry. My terror. The weight of holding everything together, pretending everything would be fine .... when I knew the man I'd been married to since I was 18 could really die--and not as a hero. I'd lived for years knowing he might die in a plane crash or by a terrorist's bullet, but this was a new enemy, one even more unpredictable than pilot error or war. His cancer earned its own special place right on my face.

I wish it had gone away after the doctor cut out his cancer, but it didn't. It grew deeper through the years of our bitter divorce and since. And when I'm worried or sad or heartbroken, it feels like a boulder sitting there between my eyes. It feels like something I should be able to let go of, to relax, to let become smooth ..... but I can't. It doesn't matter how much yoga I do or meditation or thinking happy rainbow affirmations or even how much cheap boxed wine I drink, it sits there, dug in between my eyes. That fucking line.

So I want to get one little injection of Botox there to make that line smooth out. I don't care if it only lasts four months. I think if it would just smooth out for a little while, maybe it wouldn't come back. Maybe I'd learn to let go. Maybe I'd be free of weight of the cancer and then the divorce and every other worry or sadness that has contributed to the deepening of that stupid fucking line.

My son Drake's girlfriend, Montana, said it's part of my face, part of what makes me look like me. Drake just said "no."  Elvira just says I'm crazy. She's not the only one. One friend said to "claim that line as a badge of honor." One of my sisters from Octette Bridge Club wrote, "I'm thinking the old threat our mothers made 'Don't make that face or it could freeze like that.'"

And that's the whole point. I want to refreeze my face, don't I? I don't want a badge of honor for having weathered cancer and a long, bitter divorce and several other heartbreaks since. What's wrong with wanting to get rid of the physical effects? It's OK to heal from the emotional trauma, right?

And yet, a friend who is a rolfer said she has clients who have done it and they've lost the expressiveness of their faces. And she said, "while their foreheads are smooth, their hearts are unchanged. Doesn't solve." Their hearts are unchanged.

I guess, just like the poem I wrote last night, I really do want to change not only my face, but my heart. I don't want to feel the weight of that line between my eyes. I don't want it there. I don't want it on my face, where everybody can see it.

But it's there. And for now, I've been talked out of the Botox. I'll probably let the Groupon offer expire. But it's only peer pressure and the fear that I'd stop breathing. Otherwise, I'd rather give up the ability to frown than look in the mirror and see that ugly fucking line one more time. I still want it gone.