TWENTIES-Awakening To Vanity

“A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.”

-Marianne Williamson

     By the time I turned thirty, most of my peers that were the same age were married and having babies. Dancing on bar tops and waiting for the next party at my house was no longer satisfying. I felt stuck and ready for a change. Little did I know that this would be the year that would change the course of my life forever. The year that my eye (resulting from inability to see fully from the removal of the tumor) started to drift ever-so-slightly to the left. 

     I first started noticing that my eye looked weird in photos. The camera’s flash would capture the scar tissue which lead to some freaky white glow versus a red eye every time a picture was taken. Up to this point, my eye looked almost perfect. No one could tell that anything was wrong with it, making it easier for me to forget about the cancer. I was beyond devastated and began asking my friends if my eye looked different because I couldn’t understand why my photos were changing. Some of them did notice that it was slightly veering to the left. My boyfriend, the artist, didn’t seem to mind, but I knew that we weren’t going to last. I feared that I would end up ALONE. Was anyone ever going to call me beautiful again? Do I look like a monster? I had been the girl that had been treated like a princess because of my looks. Back then, I would have never admitted that out loud, and it was true. The world treats you differently when you are good-looking, and I was amongst a herd of (I would say) very attractive people. First to get in lines. First to be paid for. First to be invited. First to be liked. First. My appearance was my worth and now my albatross. 

     My doctor said that he could fix it, and so I went into the surgery room expecting a miracle. Well, I did get my miracle, but I was yet to learn that often miracles come from situations that we DON’T want. The surgeons made it worse! 

     So now my eye was (more than) slightly off, and I was devastated. People would mistakenly believe that I was looking at the person behind them. I would end up squinting, looking down, or even wearing sunglasses when the sun had already set to avoid seeing the confusion on their faces. I can’t express how hard it was to go through. Much harder than the cancer itself. I had yet to learn that it was needed for my spiritual growth, and that it was actually here to awaken me from the shackles of vanity. We are taught with words that beauty is only skin deep, and yet, our societal models reflect anything but. I have experienced both worlds now. A life of living in the superficial world while botoxing every new wrinkle to living in a world with less focus on the outer self and more focus on the spirit of who we really are.