being pretty is hard work

I am in the nail salon to get a massage, it’s not like it might seem, but sometimes when I am desperate for a massage- it’s the only place to go. Yes, it’s not like the yoga studio or spa variety, but it will do. I am leaving where I was, relaxing as the woman places her fingers, elbows on my body, my knots, my war wounds of life. I can mute out the Asian dialect around me and the self-help of Oprah on the TV but not this. The only two women there are talking about the one thing I can’t here about right now, marriage. Not because I don’t believe in it, because I do. Not the typical American variety of the importance of the love being exhibited by ring size or the focus on the ceremony v. the relationship. No the part about committing to someone. But as your heart is breaking and pounding in similar motion you don’t want to hear about someone else’s happiness. I don’t desire the conversation of death, destruction, war, or famine either, no just not this. Marriage, rings, photographers, invites, exercise, losing enough weight, churches, I want to barf. I desperately believe in love and it’s possibilities, but in my own despair I have no desire to hear how someone else figured it out. I want to figure it out.

The cynic in me wants them to shut up. The cynic in me knows the marriage might not last. The cynic in me goes away. They are gone in the room but gone to me. I feel the pressure on my neck, it is releasing, the buzzer now ringing. Ringing. It is over.

The woman who works there is speaking to me in a loud voice almost booming, “ You are so pretty now. You look so different. You lost so much weight.”

What was I an ugly, fatso before?, I think to myself.

The woman she is working on, the one who didn’t skip a beat upon entering when asked what she needed, she said “a facelift.” She looks at me now, “You are so pretty.”

These compliments although maybe empty when you have been crying feel good. The woman’s face is weathered, she has lived. She says to me looking me in the eyes,
“Don’t marry the wrong man, I did more than once.”

And with that I am out the door. Tears brimming in my eyes. Being pretty is hard work.