I look like my mother from this angle. (Patreon)

I look like my mother at this angle. From my memory of her, I mean.

I can see where the fat deposits used to rest high on the tops of my cheekbones and are now steadily descending towards my jaw. My skin is just at the beginning of this migration, I doubt anyone else can tell the difference except to say that I don’t look 20 any more.

Today I put on foundation to mask my splotchy, acne-scarred skin. I can see that soft fuzzy texture here, how it coats over my diverse array of open pores and, though it’s obviously artificial, at least it’s a smoother artificial than that naturally ragged terrain.

I held my mother in contempt for wearing makeup. How she’d make us late because she couldn’t leave the house without concealing what she actually looked like. That fuzzy, artificial glow that smoothed over her aging, porous skin, I saw it as a badge of vanity, a visible sign of the weakness of her character. Just accept that you have wrinkles, I thought. Accept that your pores cast shadows and that the lines that run from the edge of your nostrils descend past the corners of your mouth to connect with your jaw. Accept that you’re old now. Accept that you’re done being young and beautiful, that your husband doesn’t love you, that your children fear and hate you. You’re making us late trying to cover it up with fleshy-orange powder from your compact case and brush.

I’ll never be like you, I thought. I’ll embrace my aging skin. I’ll love a partner who loves me back. I’ll never have children.

My reflection makes me so sad. The acne is settling down now just in time for the worry lines to settle in.

I want to pretend I’m worth looking at, worth talking to. I try to level out my tattered skin with thick flesh-toned liquid paste. It doesn’t look natural but at least it doesn’t look like me.

Eight years ago I blocked her phone number. The cards she sends to my office rarely make it to my desk because my studiomates recognize her handwriting now and intercept them for me. Occasionally some slip past when she uses a new fake return address and my stomach drops because she’s penetrated through my protective walls again. Once she disguised herself to approach me at a comic convention, pretending to be a reader. I froze when she revealed herself and crumpled to the floor, where I curled into the fetal position underneath my table while Matt shepherded her away and had her name added to the convention’s banned list.

If I were a clever writer, I’d tie all these subjects together. Aging, diverging, inevitability, masking, revealing, embracing, rejecting, healing. Love. Skin. Blood. Bonds. If I were a sophisticated writer, I’d let these topics incubate till they were ready to share for public consumption like a thoughtfully baked cake, not the scattered, raw ingredients that they are now. If I were a better writer. But that’s not what I am. I mask my skin and expose the rest.

I’ll never have children.

I look like my mother.

From this angle, at least.
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