ahead with it anyway.
The treatment itself takes only five minutes and isjust a few needle pricks in my forehead. It’s no big deal, and, looking at my face, you can’t tell that I’ve had anything done. But upon standing up to exit and pay, I get a wave of anxiety so intense that I feel like I’m going to faint into his candy dish. A voice in my head says,
You’re fucked
. It’s not the voice of my god. It’s my voice.
I hear the “you’re fucked” voice a lot, with or without Botox. In fact, it’s the “you’re fucked” voice that compels me to get Botox. Only now I think I’ve fucked myself
because
of the Botox.
Once outside the fetus’s office I immediately google “Botox death” on my phone. I text the one person I know who has admitted to having Botox and she texts me back
CHILL OUT
. I text my friend who grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but she has never had it. I feel like I have entered a new world. I am now one of “those people,” the Botoxed, and can never again cross back over the threshold of the non-Botoxed. I ride my bike down the beach path and am convinced that people are staring at me. The sun sets over the Pacific and I have Botox. I stop into a store and begin “testing” my forehead in the mirror, scrunching my face and raising my eyebrows. I look insane, but my forehead appears normal. It still moves. The Botox takes three days to two weeks to really work anyway, so I won’t know if I’m going to become a statue for a while. I google some moreand discover that Jennifer Aniston doesn’t do Botox. I am worse than Jennifer Aniston. I am worse than a lot of people.
Over the course of the next few days I feel like I have been poisoned, just a little. I have flu-like symptoms. My forehead feels like there is a plate on it. I kind of didn’t realize that the word
toxin
actually means “toxin.” Like, I kind of didn’t think about that. I keep googling “Botox death” looking for new results. I also google “Botox flu,” “Botox soulless,” “plastic surgery disaster,” “what’s wrong with me,” “why,” and “how to love yourself.”
As has been said, I am not a human being trying to be spiritual. I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I get it. I know that it’s in there. I know that I probably contain innate coping mechanisms to deal with, and even celebrate, the ways that nature transforms my body as I age. I should probably be in some goddess circle, not the dermatologist’s office. I should be processing, with a bunch of long-pubed witches, my transition from maidenhood to whatever it is that comes before crone. MILF? Pre-MILF? But I don’t trust my spirit to take care of me once I leave the goddess circle. I don’t trust that when I encounter another circle, a circle of superficial maidens, I won’t compare myself to them and hurt.
The first time I remember my spirit trying to tell me it would take care of me was the first time I tried psychedelics. I ate shrooms, but instead of eating them with honey, I ate them with these diet kind of Doritos made with a chemical called Olestra that makes you shit out everything. Right before I took the shrooms, I bleached my brown hair bright blond and burned my scalp. I also went to the tanning salon a hundred times. Beauty and truth are fucking confusing.
I took the shrooms in a shitty park in Massachusetts, which looked to me like Elysium. When I started tripping I was like,
Why can’t people just be kind to one another?
But what I really think I meant was,
Why can’t I be kind to myself?
I knew that I was seeing truth, though later I could not tell you exactly what that truth was. What was the truth? I think the truth was my own innocence. I saw the trees of the park and that their roots were actually inverse branches and that they did not hate me. They wanted me to be deep. I swore to never hurt myself again. My spirit smiled.
But how I hurt myself so many times after that. And if
The treatment itself takes only five minutes and isjust a few needle pricks in my forehead. It’s no big deal, and, looking at my face, you can’t tell that I’ve had anything done. But upon standing up to exit and pay, I get a wave of anxiety so intense that I feel like I’m going to faint into his candy dish. A voice in my head says,
You’re fucked
. It’s not the voice of my god. It’s my voice.
I hear the “you’re fucked” voice a lot, with or without Botox. In fact, it’s the “you’re fucked” voice that compels me to get Botox. Only now I think I’ve fucked myself
because
of the Botox.
Once outside the fetus’s office I immediately google “Botox death” on my phone. I text the one person I know who has admitted to having Botox and she texts me back
CHILL OUT
. I text my friend who grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but she has never had it. I feel like I have entered a new world. I am now one of “those people,” the Botoxed, and can never again cross back over the threshold of the non-Botoxed. I ride my bike down the beach path and am convinced that people are staring at me. The sun sets over the Pacific and I have Botox. I stop into a store and begin “testing” my forehead in the mirror, scrunching my face and raising my eyebrows. I look insane, but my forehead appears normal. It still moves. The Botox takes three days to two weeks to really work anyway, so I won’t know if I’m going to become a statue for a while. I google some moreand discover that Jennifer Aniston doesn’t do Botox. I am worse than Jennifer Aniston. I am worse than a lot of people.
Over the course of the next few days I feel like I have been poisoned, just a little. I have flu-like symptoms. My forehead feels like there is a plate on it. I kind of didn’t realize that the word
toxin
actually means “toxin.” Like, I kind of didn’t think about that. I keep googling “Botox death” looking for new results. I also google “Botox flu,” “Botox soulless,” “plastic surgery disaster,” “what’s wrong with me,” “why,” and “how to love yourself.”
As has been said, I am not a human being trying to be spiritual. I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I get it. I know that it’s in there. I know that I probably contain innate coping mechanisms to deal with, and even celebrate, the ways that nature transforms my body as I age. I should probably be in some goddess circle, not the dermatologist’s office. I should be processing, with a bunch of long-pubed witches, my transition from maidenhood to whatever it is that comes before crone. MILF? Pre-MILF? But I don’t trust my spirit to take care of me once I leave the goddess circle. I don’t trust that when I encounter another circle, a circle of superficial maidens, I won’t compare myself to them and hurt.
The first time I remember my spirit trying to tell me it would take care of me was the first time I tried psychedelics. I ate shrooms, but instead of eating them with honey, I ate them with these diet kind of Doritos made with a chemical called Olestra that makes you shit out everything. Right before I took the shrooms, I bleached my brown hair bright blond and burned my scalp. I also went to the tanning salon a hundred times. Beauty and truth are fucking confusing.
I took the shrooms in a shitty park in Massachusetts, which looked to me like Elysium. When I started tripping I was like,
Why can’t people just be kind to one another?
But what I really think I meant was,
Why can’t I be kind to myself?
I knew that I was seeing truth, though later I could not tell you exactly what that truth was. What was the truth? I think the truth was my own innocence. I saw the trees of the park and that their roots were actually inverse branches and that they did not hate me. They wanted me to be deep. I swore to never hurt myself again. My spirit smiled.
But how I hurt myself so many times after that. And if
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