browzing

they say that you can read someone's past in their face, if you know how to read between the lines. i'm inclined to agree, though i think that if you want to read my history, you don't need to go much further than the eyebrows.

i was once told that i can be described in the point of my chin and the angle of my brow, and it's true. my left eyebrow is slightly higher than my right, the result of years of cocking it jauntily, in disbelief and incredulity, to express surprise and make a point. the lopsided brows (unlike my lopsided ears) show that i am an expressive girl, an animated girl who has had a lot of experiences worth cocking a brow over.

my eyebrows are also telling of more carefully hidden mental sensations. i had my eyebrows waxed on monday, and the aesthetician (waxer) was aghast at the state of them: sparse, fine, full of patchy holes. she asked me what i had been doing to my poor defenseless brows to bring them to such a state of destruction. to which i said: nothing but years of abuse can create that kind of lasting impression.

the story goes like this: at the ripe old age of sixteen, it came to my attention that my eyebrows took up as much facial real estate as groucho marx's did his. i'm not kidding. ask ross. he's seen my driver's license. anyway. at the time, having fallen victim to the ugly duckling syndrome and all the low self esteem that entails, i decided to take matters into my own hands and tame the savage beasts above my eyes. which i did. and they looked great. until i started getting a little extreme. i soon became obsessive about pruning the brows, to the point where it became a nervous habit. this is why i had only half of a right eyebrow during college. while i have calmed down some (resigned myself to a life of letting the professionals do it-- i will permit myself this luxury), the damage has been done. there are holes in my brows where nothing will grow anymore. these scraggly bits are almost like battle scars, proof that i have settled some scores with a few of my demons. i'm still crazy, but it's a different brand of crazy. and proud of it.

it probably sounds silly to you, that i consider my grooming habits to be telling signs of my own emotional fortitude, points in which i can take pride. but, when you consider the fact that many of the other ways i tried to destroy myself back in the day didn't leave any marks...i mean, a girl's got to be able to point to something when she talks about surviving herself. for some girls, it's a slash scar on the wrist. for me, it's my eyebrows.