This is not rhetorical. This is really my eyes deceiving me.
Growing up, I had personal favourites among my own physical traits - My eyes and my hair! Maybe because they were the ones I was most complimented on. The ones that drew compliments like magnets, even from strangers, often in the same breath as a put-down.
You see, I was heavier as a child. Friends and family, well-meaning or otherwise, had opinions about that. But rarely did a comment about my weight land without a softener attached to it. "Oh goodness, but you have the most beautiful eyes!" or "I love your hair. I wish I had it!" It was the era of the backhanded compliment, dressed up as kindness. And so, almost by accident, I grew up vain about exactly those two things. Not out of arrogance, out of survival, really. They were the parts of me that the world seemed to agree on. So I held onto them. Very dearly!
I used to line my eyes religiously with kohl. I have erased and redrawn until I was completely satisfied with the winged and smoky eyes I wanted. I used to oil and groom my hair with a dedication that, frankly, I have never since applied to anything more productive. These were my rituals, my quiet vanities, my small acts of self-celebration in a world that seemed only partially on my side. Things that I loved to do. During my engineering college out-of-state trip, there was even a picture taken of my hair in a ponytail beside the actual tail of a pony, to put an end to an argument as to who carried the ponytail better.. My hair or the pony.. And I won! Unanimously! (Note to self - Find that picture!!)
Then, as it tends to do, life got in the way. The kohl stayed in the drawer. The oil sat on the shelf. Time ran out, as it always does, and slowly those rituals dissolved into the background noise of adulthood.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday, it became impossible to ignore what my neglect had quietly been doing all along. We were out for dinner at a dimly lit restaurant. As I settled down for the next two hours of being my kids' personal waitress, my hair clip, usually so faithfully taut and dependable, holding up every last strand with authority, gave up. It slid down silently, without so much as a warning, and wedged itself into the cushions of the chair behind me.
And so there I was. One hand frantically pushing limp, uncooperative strands of hair away from my face, the other holding up a plastic-coated menu at an increasingly ridiculous distance from my eyes, squinting. Hard! The kind of squinting that leaves no room for dignity. The kind that, a few years ago, I would never have associated with myself in a restaurant, at dinner, in public!!
The dim lighting that once felt romantic now felt like a personal attack. The menu that should have taken ten seconds to read, now became a torture. And my hair, that glorious, thick, once-dependable crown I had taken entirely for granted, hung around my face like it, too, had simply stopped trying! It was, in the most unceremonious way possible, my wake-up call. Delivered over a bread basket, in a dimly lit booth, with no witnesses except me and my broken heart.
My hair, my beloved, dramatic, thick-as-a-forest hair, has been staging a slow protest. Every time over the years that I chopped it off in a moment of frustration, it always came roaring back. Thicker. Longer. Almost smug about it. So when I mercilessly slaughtered my long, beautiful braids nearly a year ago, I expected the same defiant comeback. It has still not come! I am now deep in the rabbit hole of hair growth remedies, concoctions, and desperate research. Castor oil promises. Ancient grandmother recipes, I am willing to try without question. I am waiting, with what little patience I have left, to see if any of it works.
And while I wait...My eyes. The very ones that were always pulled out of a crowd, that people paused to comment on, that I lined and highlighted and was quietly proud of for years. Those eyes now squint at my phone screen. They strain over the pages of books I have loved all my life. They are, in the most poetic betrayal imaginable, beginning to ask for glasses.
My two favourites. The ones that carried me through the years when the rest of me felt like too much. The ones I stopped paying attention to, assuming they would simply always be there, unchanged and loyal. They are also finally giving up on me. Turns out, even your favourites notice when you stop showing up for them.
Maybe this is where I finally fade into oblivion. Into the background. And make invisibility my identity. No longer seen/no longer able to see. I will admit, there is a strange grief in that, one I wasn't prepared for. Or maybe, this is just me. Being me again. A little over the top, obsessing over the irrelevant!
And Ps- if it matters, to get me out of this rut and for some self-consolation, I have cancelled the previous trip itinerary for a lake holiday and am actually driving down to get me some island life and the much-needed Vitamin SEA!!!! I need to heal and let my inner child free again!
