It’s Monday morning, which means I need to go to work soon, and this is what I’m facing.
Ice and cold. (Cue Google Images … )
I chose the last two images from the Google Images Buffet (for “ice and cold”) because of something else I’m looking at, this morning.
My face.
I accidentally scratched my own face at the beginning of the weekend. I still don’t know how I did this. Actually, that’s not really true — I DO know how I did it. It involved getting ready for bed, having a fingernail that was too long, and losing track of the relationship in space and time between my hand and my nose.
I hope I’m not the only one, out here in the blogosphere, who has ever done something like that.
This didn’t really bother me, although the scratch bled a lot (probably because I’m on anti-coagulant meds). I thought it would heal over the weekend, so I would look “presentable” by the time I needed to return to work.
However, when I got up this morning and looked in the mirror …. Eeeeeeek!!! It’s still pretty gnarly looking. I mean, you can really see an obvious wound, on my nose. And I have to get ready for work, where people, most likely, will be looking at my face.
Hmmmmmm.
I have lots of thoughts about this, right now, including:
- We all have wounds.
- Some of them are more obvious than others.
- If we do not have a choice — regarding whether we can hide a wound — we might feel more shame.
- It can be traumatic for people to deal with damage to faces. (I am working with a person, in therapy, who is dealing with this right now.)
I have more thoughts, but you know what? I have to stop this post, so I can figure out what to do with this obvious wound on my face.
Here are my options:
- Try camouflaging it, with make-up.
- Put a band-aid on it, to hide it completely. Although that’s going to disturb people even more, don’t you agree? I’m still freaked out by this band-aid
and it was on the BACK of somebody’s head.
3. Another solution, less connected to shame, which I haven’t figured out yet.
Okay! It’s time for me to end this post and get ready for work.
Thanks to Paul j Horton (who painted “Ice Cold Lips”), lorency (for the iced-eye image “Cold as Ice”), people who have accidentally hurt themselves in any way, all those with imperfect faces, and to you — of course!! — for reading today.
- I found this image here.
** I found this image here.
*** I found this image here.
**** From “Pulp Fiction,” in case you didn’t know.