That's My Bix!

I’m not sure when my body started falling apart.

I used to worry about it in my late twenties, with the emergence of The Crevice, a horizontal tilde crease above my eyebrows. I tried getting rid of The Crevice, rubbing creams in there and sticking Frownies tape on it while I slept. Nothing helped. Nothing fazed its Royal Creviceness. It remains. I maintain bangs. The Crevice endures.

In my twenties, also, a weird vein pattern emerged on my outer thigh where it pushed against the arm of the uncomfortable office chair in my work cubicle. Reddish purple, delicate, almost like filigree, it meandered like a mapped tributary across my thigh. It’s still there, a creek bed testimony of my time spent in a windowless office space.

In my thirties, facial hair, a marker of the PCOS that served as my life’s unreliable narrator. I paid a dermatologist to laser off my mustache. It eventually came back, with friends on my chin. The fine peach fuzz on my face decided it too wanted an adventure and grew longer, vellus hair with an improved CV. I’d always heard not to shave your face, so I’d clip with shears, the points so close to my eyes that I spent the entire time cringing. This couldn’t possibly be a good idea, this clipping. In Las Vegas, an economy based in nudity and flesh meant that laser hair removal places were on every corner, the prices ridiculously low. I could have had my entire body denuded below my earlobes for under a grand. The first thing they told me was that before every appointment, I absolutely had to shave the area, so I lathered up and pretended to be KD Lang and Cindy Crawford at the same time. The result was amazing — I’d never loved my face that much. Ultimately, laser hair removal doesn’t do anything to the clear stuff — it’s back. But with the pandamnit, face masks and Zoom calls hide everything, so I stopped caring for months.

Now I have to waste brain space thinking about it again. Or not.

During the pandulce, I was forced to give up my beloved hair stylist appointments. When Las Vegas allowed hair stylists to operate again, she made up home DIY color kits for me and Esteban colored my hair on the back patio, but it was a messy affair, and awful to rinse even at the kitchen sink with the sprayer. Each time, I remembered why I don’t color my hair myself. I tried to embrace my natural light brown tinged with sparklers, annoyingly only present where the hair falls into a part. After six months post-coloring, I got very zen about it, live and let live etcetera. Then the moment I reached full vaccination, I caved and made an appointment with a new colorist in Green Bay. She botched the job entirely. I don’t really blame her too much — my natural brown is so much lighter than what I had been wearing that she probably tried to find a happy medium. However, she erred on the light side and gave me “hot roots” as it’s known in the trade. So now I have a strange ômbre of dark, light, middle happening and it’s worse than just rocking COVID highlights.

This month, I turned fifty.

Last weekend, my mother, seventy this year, stared at me and hissed “I can’t believe you’re FIFTY” and on the second syllable, a bit of spit flew out. I know this is less a story about me and more about her, as is always the case with my mother. My maiden aunt shook her head and said “Not a wrinkle on your face.” She’s wrong (clearly The Crevice would beg to differ) but then says “Fifty is good. I liked fifty. I hate sixty.”

I don’t know what to say to that so instead I say “Sunscreen” too late responding to the wrinkle comment but instead sounding like an antidote for being a sexagenarian. She nods, as if this is sage advice, and then adds “You never liked being outside.”

Accurate. Both my mother and maiden aunt worshipped the warmth of summer, baring as much skin as possible, using actual cooking oil in lieu of tanning unguents. I remember lazy days in August, watching them flex their toes, my mother in silent competition with my aunt’s Native ancestry which gave her a headstart in the roasting process. Now each of them carries their own histories on their skin, different than mine, but I guess the same in many ways.

These things, however, are external.

Now I worry about internals. I worry about what’s inside.

That PCOS gave me a giant bumper crop of ovarian cysts, harvested every two or three months with a painful several hours of panting and yipping and whimpers. Every time I’ve had an ultrasound, twin cysts lurk, one on each side. Then there are the fibroids, three the size of various fruits, a strawberry, a lime, an orange. The fruit salad of agony each month. I don’t want suggestions or advice. I know the options. I went through a fairly invasive and painful procedure in February to ensure that there’s no cancer lurking. There isn’t but the asshole fruit salad still wallops me every few weeks until my best friend is a heating pad set to 5. This is how it will be until it’s not.

It might be because of the pandemonium or it might be the twists and bitterness of the aged, but I’m finding myself more easily shook, more likely to say “who gives a fuck” and indulge myself in the maudlin. Perhaps this is the midlife crisis that I put off by going back to grad school, or perhaps this is just my body reminding me no amount of face cream and night masques can stave the beast that takes us all eventually.

I think about my aunt assuring me that fifty is good, fifty is enjoyable, how much she enjoyed it, and how much she loathes being sixty. I wonder what she might have said ten years ago, if she would have said the same about fifty. I often say my favorite phrase now which is “It’s better than the alternative” but also, this tipping point is such a ruse. It’s a falseness. It means nothing. Each day we take another step. And then another. And another. We pray to a god that lurks inside ourselves but that god doesn’t listen.

But it’s better than the alternative.