Plastic Parts

In response to a writing prompt I was given in the sixth grade, I wrote an impassioned letter to Pantene. I was irate the company had yet to create a product line for curly haired girls! After we turned in our assignments my teacher made the decision to read random essays aloud. Although it was meant to be anonymous, the minute my letter began to be read all eyes turned on me and the class erupted into fits of laughter. I was mortified. To this day I wonder what prompted me to write something so seemingly vacuous. Even at 12, I pondered everything from Miranda rights to chauvinism. I could have written about a myriad of substantive topics. Why hadn't I chosen one of them? Why hand't I decided on my soapbox about having to kneel each week at school next to a ruler to gauge the appropriateness of my skirt length? I was a progressive girl! After all, I wore three bands on my left ring finger representing my marriages to Tom Cruise (yikes), Brad Pitt (yum), and Freddie Prinze Junior (yawn). Even amongst the depth of my passion, thoughts, and fictitious marriages to celebrity men, I knew on some level that progressive girls didn't write letters to Pantene…

Did they?

Either way, from an early age I was furious with the beauty industry's inability to meet my demands, yet somehow still hoped they would someday deliver…

A few years later, I overhead a commercial playing in the background with the catchphrase that "straight was boring." I knew immediately it was a beauty commercial as the narrator spoke in a fake and somewhat salacious british accident. I rushed into the room hoping to discover Pantene had finally heard my demands and had pronounced curly hair as the new standard of a beauty! I deflated instantly when I realized it was an add for mascara, campaigning for the curl of lashes. I took mental note and added it to my cognitive catalogue of what was meant to be straight, what was meant to curve, what was meant to be large, and what was meant to be small. I was constantly confused. Bigger was meant to be better right? However it seemed to me every surface area of your body was meant to live in perfect contradiction. You were meant to have a small forehead, but big eyes. A small nose, but big lips. Supple cheeks, but an angular jaw. A delicate collar bone, but giant breasts. A tiny waist, but substantial hips. A buxom buttocks, but gapped thighs. Long legs, but delicate ankles and feet. A natural face, but two coats of mascara. Sunkissed hair, but peroxide laden strands. I didn't know which impossible dichotomy I was meant to tackle first… I didn't know what parts of me were meant to be real and what should be fashioned fake…The architecture of artificial comes with a virtually illegible blueprint…What was I to do… I wished Pantene would tell me…

This summer when I discovered I would have to have a partially artificial eye, I was ill. Somewhere in the archives of my 12 year old beauty catalogue, I determined fake eyes were wrong. Eyelashes could be fake, eyelids could be lifted, contacts could be colored, liner could be tattooed, eyebrows could be shaped and dyed, but eyes must be real. Prosthetic, is one of those words you automatically bristle at. There is a reason the beauty industry never markets any of its illusive nothingness with the use of this dirty word. Breast implants are not sold as prosthetic boobs, rhinoplasty (which I personally think is a heinous word) is not pedaled as a prosthetic schnoz…"Prosthetic" denotes something you should try not to look at, something that is the result of a tragedy, something that belongs in the costume bin of a community theatre. The beauty industry demands you never avert your eyes.

After two months of having a blank, white, eyeball, I went to meet with the ocularist in order for him to craft and fit my prosthesis (or as some like to call it "cosmetic shell".) I had feared this day for almost a decade. When I arrived, I was somewhat soothed by the scent of his office as it smelled spookily similar to a nail salon…(I later found out that this was because my eye would be made out of the same acrylic that had graced my nails for years.) Stereotypically, ocularists are somewhat peculiar people. In fact they are virtually the last existing profession practicing true craftsmanship. To this day the only way to become an ocularist is through apprenticeship. All other trades requiring true apprenticeship, such as being a blacksmith or cobbler have been eradicated through the advent of new technology. There are no photoshop applications, instagram filters, or 3D printers that can match the human eye as well as the meticulous craft of painting it through delicate human touch. To start the process the ocularist photographed my eye and carefully followed my gaze. He informed me he hadn't ever in his 25 year career seen color or detail quite like mine. When he showed me the photograph of my iris I was stunned. It was indeed specific, ornate and magnificent. Pantene never would be able to reproduce it!

When I returned for my second appointment, the ocularist told me it had required almost 75 layers of color and triple the paint time to master my eye. He then went on to describe personalty characteristics he noticed in me. I marveled at how spot on he was at describing me merely from spending a few short minutes with me and studying the intricacies of my iris. Forget snowflakes, if you really want to know who you are and where you come from, study your eyes… Strangely at the conclusion of the process I felt profoundly beautiful in ways that felt foreign and surprising. I no longer needed a mass produced blue print or catalogue of dichotomies.

 In my face now sits an exquisite piece of artwork designed to match a one of a kind masterpiece. I never would have imagined the thing I feared would be most alienating would provide me with a quiet but powerful self assurance. As I reflect on the heated letter I wrote to Pantene all those years ago, I realize I was in fact progressive. I see that both my acknowledgement of the beauty industry's pervasive presence at the time and foresight concerning its now rampant reign were actually wise. I didn't direct my questions to an audience that was able to give me adequate answers, but I was asking the right questions. As I have now found perfect answers in my imperfect face, I am ready to write new letters and ask far more important questions. Women have the option to perpetually participate in a dialogue of false dichotomies or they have the power to create and contribute to a conversation of change.

Some Infinities: Why the Momentary Soulmate Matters

Up until recently I was quite uncomfortable watching plot lines about characters dealing with cancer. Concurrent to the timing of my most recent surgery, the film, The Fault In Our Stars came out. Though I have been in remission nearly a decade, I tend to shy away from the sensationalized telling of a cancer story. However, for some reason I had a pressing desire, perhaps even need, to see the film. My sister advised me to wait until I had fully recovered from my surgery to see it, as she feared it would hit too close too home... After all, it was about a seventeen year old girl (the age I was when I was diagnosed), navigating the complications of first loves and growing up with cancer as a backdrop. (Which is what I did.)

Though I was terrified to see it, I had to. Determined to be brave, I put on my sunglasses and went to face the feature. Though I produced copious amounts of tears and identified with a lot of the film, I left feeling oddly emancipated and invigorated. As I reflected on this good but surprising feeling, I realized, for the first time in a decade, my cancer story was no longer my story (or at least not my only one) and while I was able to empathize with the characters, I no longer identified myself as one of them. I strangely gained a great deal of closure from the experience and went on to see the film an additional two times and recently completed the book. Let me preface this by saying there were many things in both the book and film I took issue with, most especially trivializing and mocking the role of faith in such struggles. I found little congruence in how the story deals with God, as my own experience has only further confirmed and solidified my faith in Him. I couldn't relate to the hopeless framing. However two ideas deeply resonated with me. The first being that a cancer story does not have to be a perpetual, all encompassing, defining, personal narrative and the second being the idea of "Some Infinities."

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” 
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

My transition from adolescence to adulthood all took place with cancer, treatment, and recovery concurrently playing in the background. Not a solitary decision refrained from being colored, for better or worse, by those experiences. How I spent my time, where I chose to go to college, what I chose to study, how I engaged socially and who I fell in love with were occasionally side effects and often profound blessings informed by a daunting backdrop.
In my entire decade of being launched into adulthood, while remaining a vulnerable child, I was only genuinely in love once. It happened right on the cusp of the cancer battle, and he quickly became the symbol of my past, present and future. It took years, over 3,000 miles and some really strange suitors in order for me to fully let him go. I am not sure this man, whom at the time I believed to love infinitely, ever sincerely reciprocated. He may have been enamored with me for a short time, but never saw the infinity I did. He was/is a good boy/man. His kindness was rare and the type you don't easily come by. In many ways, he was an ideal first love. I do not have a moments pause about him being mine. However, the swirl of my personal circumstance, shaken as a snow globe of chaos, clouded my ability to see we had evolved and the incongruity between us. For years, those close to me pleaded I let him go, but I never was able. There was no placebo for the hope he had once given me and for the past normalcy he tied me to. There is challenge enough to reason your way through the fallibility of a first love at a young age… add cancer and almost everything feels desperate, earnest, and shakespearean. I associated him with the last time I had truly felt normal, I associated him with all the joys of being seventeen, idealistic, carefree, beautiful and present. I associated him with my hopes for a future, for marriage, and for children. I viewed my life as a dream sequence with him as the book ends. He provided the solid memory of who I was when I felt like a real person and the tangible hope of who I might be when I was no longer malignant. Over time I began to recognize how profoundly my past and future created cloud cover over who I actually was. Eventually the dust settled into who I needed to be.

Though he did not turn out to be my infinite love, he was the first person to give me real faith in it. He represented the infinite hope existing in finite circumstances.

Throughout the years I have struggled as I have felt friendships ebb and flow, relationships wane, and the absence of those who were once present fixtures in my life. My love and losses never fail to surprise me. But with every new relationship, flickering friendship, lost opportunity and disappointing outcome I have come to know infinity. I have come to learn the exquisite truth that imperfect people and circumstances can provide perfecting tutorials. The momentary soulmate matters. Though one should do all they can to avoid being a doormat, one should also recognize the difference and privilege of providing another soul with a stepping stone. Every heartache I have encountered is merely the fruit of a prior, perfect, infinity.

I have faith in an all encompassing infinity. Every soul possesses an unbounded set. I know this through the ennobling blessing of "some infinities." I am grateful every day for imperfect people and circumstances that never cease to come into my life at perfect times. I am humbled by the little infinities every great loss brings me on the days I feel limited and bound. Some infinities may be larger than others, but every infinity provides innumerable possibilities and impacts our eternity.