So Sad Today - Melissa Broder Page 0,34
appear happy. It’s a Pavlovian smile. Fool them, fool yourself. Same reason I’m getting Botox.
I tell the fetus not to make me look like Joan Rivers. I tell him to keep it natural. I ask him a thousand questions about the dangers of Botox and if there is any recovery time. My fear regarding my face dates back to the time I ate a box of grape candies at my grandmom’s house and she spent the night scrubbing my purple tongue with a washcloth. She said she was afraid that I would have to walk down the aisle at my wedding one day with a purple tongue. Like the purple was permanent and not ephemeral.
The fetus says we’re only going to do “baby Botox,” just a few little squirts for the three lines. He says that there is no recovery time, but he recommends not lying down or putting my head down for three hours after the treatment. He says that in 1% of cases, someone will walk away with a “droopy eyebrow” that sags into their eyes. I know I will be the 1%. But I go ahead with it anyway.
The treatment itself takes only five minutes and is just 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 more and 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