I stare at my face in the mirror. I am in line for plastic surgery, but I kind of don’t want it. I understand why I need it and why my therapist Amy urges me almost every session- why though? Can she not bear to look at my face? Aren’t they supposed to teach body positivity and all that shite, why is she hating on my scars then?
I will admit, it’s more than a scar. It is a full-blown disfigurement. I get it, it makes people uncomfortable. They want me to fix it, to not see it, to not have to deal with it. It’s almost worse because I am a conventionally attractive “pretty woman”, and seeing a pretty woman with a hideous disfigurement across her cheekbones and jawline somehow upsets people more, I think. I was told many times that I was lucky my eyes were spared, and at first I thought it was because, well duh yes, eyes are useful organs for seeing and shit, but then I realised people actually more often meant it in the aesthetic sense, as in I was lucky my eyes weren’t disfigured. I told my therapist that it seems as if I need the plastic surgery to appease people and how they felt about my face.
“It’s so interesting that you feel that way, Miriam. So are you yourself quite happy? And the scarring doesn’t trigger how you got the injuries?”
“Well, I was sick then right? And I understand, my baby did this to me. But it wasn’t her fault.”
Amy smiles kindly at me. I smile my hideous Quasimodo grin back, my torn but healed lips drawing back to reveal gums and teeth at an angle which should not be revealed, in regular human faces.
It’s still quite fresh- it only happened fairly recently. Let me tell you the story, and you can tell me how I should feel, since Amy clearly sucks at her job.
I live alone, as many of us do. Or more correctly, I don’t live with other humans. It’s fine, I like it this way. I have dated and so on, but nothing ever felt right enough for me to actually end up in a committed relationship. Which is fine. At least one good thing about my disfigurement is that people stop asking me questions about my dating life. You may be surprised to hear -or maybe not- that the amount of interest I’ve been receiving hasn’t noticeably diminished. Apparently having a hideous disfigurement on your face, running from the eyes downwards doesn’t prevent men from trying their luck, and if anything seems to turn them on more.
Anyway, back to the main story. I’d been having some woman’s issues, I won’t go into details, but you can guess, things down there weren’t running as smoothly as they should have been, I was going to see a doctor but the wait times, ugh, I wasn’t actually in any pain, well, sometimes I was but then it seemed to pass until the next time.
It happened in the living room. One minute I was messing around, the next minute the “lights went off” as they say, and when they came back on, somewhat dimly and flickering, I was on the floor, and I couldn’t get up.
I didn’t even try. You know how you know you can’t do something- like you can’t fly? This was one of those times- except I knew I couldn’t get up. There was a mass of sticky stuff and wetness between my legs, blood and pee and god knows what else. I tried to crawl, the dim flickers grew heavier, and I gave up.
I was scared. Nobody had any reason to look in on me, and my phone was in the other room. I don’t walk around my own place with my phone in my hand. Do you?
I opened my mouth to call for help and a meowling whimper came out. I closed my mouth.
For some reason I had to flip myself, I hated the rough carpet pressing against my cheek and my stomach and I thought I would be more comfortable on my back. If I could rest on my back, I think I was thinking, I might regain my strength to get up.
I don’t know how I quite managed it, but I did. With a cry and shooting pains in my pelvic area and a weird squishy noise, I did it. I flopped around. I was lying on my back. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life.
And then my baby came up to me, sniffing. In the midst of my pain, I smiled. You heard about this kind of thing, right? Maybe she would get help to me somehow and be a hero.
“Hello lovey”, I murmured. “Don’t worry, Mommy will be up soon”.
She sniffed below, I could feel her whiskers delicately grazing me, and she clearly decided she didn’t like what she smelt, and came back up to my face again. She started meowing somewhat urgently.
“I know baby I know. Mommy will get up soon and feed you.”
Time passed. The smell was worse. I still couldn’t get up.
She came up to my face again, her eyes glowing yellow. She bent her beautiful furry face and touched mine with her nose.
“It’s ok, I know you’re hungry. I’ll get up in a minute.”
She pushed her face against me now, and I felt so sad. “Are trying to help me get up, sweetheart? I love you so much, precious. I’ll get up in a minute.”
She pushed her face harder, opened her mouth, I turned my head away to escape her chomping sharp teeth but then she sank her teeth in my cheek. The pain prompted me to scream like I had been unable to before, but she didn’t seem to mind. Poor thing had been unfed for hours. I seemed to transcend my body and screamed and screamed.
She had ripped out half my cheek and face before people came, alerted by my screaming. As I mentioned to Amy, she basically saved me. Otherwise god knows I’d probably have died on my floor, lying on my back with a mass of blood and pee between my legs.
She vanished when the people broke my door and came in, and wasn’t there once I was released and returned home.
But she came back after a while. I was so happy to see my baby.
I haven’t told Amy about her though. Do you think I should?