In 1981, while conjugating the verb être in French class - my vision blurred. I blinked... blinked again. I then stuck the tips of my middle fingers into my eyes, discovering an abundance of eye guck loitering beneath my eye balls.
rheum noun
ˈrüm
: a watery discharge from the mucous membranes especially of the eyes or nose
The path towards my eye guck removal was navigated logically. I had an issue with eye guck. I had fully-functioning fingers that could swipe the lengths of my lower eyelids, gathering said eye guck. This eye guck removal became the standard practice for the elimination of blurred vision. I didn't think anything of it.
For 41 years.
Until February of 2023.
While applying stage makeup for a production of Into the Woods, I was taken aback by the discovery of bags under my eyes. Seen in the sun-like brightness of the vanity bulbs at my makeup table, my undereye area suddenly resembled an aged basset hound. (My perspective. David and Rissa keep telling me I'm nuts.)
In 2007, when my high school reunion was on the horizon, I became utterly focused on my forehead lines. Four horizontal lines, each a centimeter apart, turning my 38-year-old forehead into a octogenarian's.
How did I cultivate these forehead lines? In my early 20s, I did a production of A Comedy of Errors... in mask. And I was told by the director that I needed to raise my eyebrows while I smiled, or the audience wasn't going to see my eyes properly. For my art... nay, for my very presentation in life as a whole, I immediately eschewed my natural smile and introduced this eyebrow-raised, lunatic, manga-esque rictus, so that my eyes could be seen. Only to realize, 15 years later, as I contemplated the afore-mentioned high school reunion, that my forehead resembled the bottom four lines on a music staff.
(I blame you, Mike Brunet. For wanting to see my eyes when I was wearing that fucking mask. And no, don't try to weasel out of your culpability by telling me that I didn't have to smile like that when I wasn't onstage, wearing a mask. Don't fucking attempt logic with me, you rat bastard.)
I, like every other 38-year-old woman attending a high school reunion, wanted to look like I was still 18, only better. But those fucking forehead lines were the only thing I could see. I couldn't un-see them.
I saved up and had a round of Botox treatment. This treatment completely erased the top two lines on my forehead. The top part of my forehead was marble-like in its smooth perfection. The bottom? Still had the fucking lines. And I was certain that everyone would see those lines. Because there ain't nothing like a high-school reunion to put you back in the head space of a paranoid teenager.
All this to say that a precedent for physical fixation had been set. So, when I noticed my less-than-perfect undereye area this year, and realized that I had spent 41 years of my life actively pulling my undereye skin down to collect eye guck, I went into a vanity tailspin. In the jet wash of this tailspin came the YouTube makeup tutorials, caffeine-infused under eye creams, cold spoons, lymphatic drainage...
blepharoplasty noun
bleph·a·ro·plas·ty ˈble-fə-rō-ˌpla-stē
: plastic surgery on the eyelid especially to remove fatty or excess tissue
I suggested that Rissa and David could take a wee syringe and suck the undereye fat out for me, but they totally shut me down. Not a problem. I am confident that I can squirrel away the $6,000 to get the procedure done in ten years.
For now, I'm practicing undereye exercises. I'm calling it Ocular Casing Micro Tightening. I do teeny, tiny, rapid squints several times a day. I may still have bags, but they will become muscular bags. My goal is to be able to bounce quarters off those suckers.
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