Don’t look at me, I’m indiscrete

Loose lips sink ships, but rogue facial expressions can get you fired. Or into a fight. Or worse.

I have this recurring dream that I can take my face off. I’ve had it since high school (which by now was a really long time ago). Sometimes I dream that I have to stitch it back on and I can see the stitch marks around the edge of my face, a la Frankenstein. Being a ‘woman of a certain age’, sometimes I wonder if that’s my subconscious telling me that I should ‘have some work done’. And after having seen myself in a film recently, that thought is suddenly occurring to me independently of these dreams. Jesus H., when did my face start to sag? You can really see it if someone’s filmed you, when you’re not paying attention to how you hold your face in the mirror.

Once I drove up into a parking space in a big parking garage at the university hospital where we used to live and a saw a woman I knew sitting in her car, with the engine off, staring blankly into the windscreen at nothing, but smiling her head off as if she was listening to a school teacher talk about how fabulous her little boy was. It was so fucking creepy because she clearly HAD ‘had some work done’ and it really seemed like she was practicing smiling while nobody was looking. She was (is) a beautiful but aging sorority girl type who I knew for a fact was very vain about her appearance and affected this constant, grinding Southern woman Junior League charm that all but knocked you down. I gave some thought to getting out of the car, going over to hers, and saying hello but I decided that might embarrass her. It would me.

When I first walked into my therapist’s office, I noticed two large paintings on the wall, both of women wearing or holding up masks over their faces. I couldn’t believe it and started crying like a crazy person walking into a therapist’s office. It took me about 20 minutes to recover. I still have to situate myself in there so that I’m not looking at those paintings, or they just completely overwhelm me.

Because here’s the thing: my face has its own Tourret’s Syndrome and I cannot always hold back an eyeball roll or a frown or….whatever. It’s been that way since….well, high school, when I was CONSTANTLY getting fired from shitty jobs for my epic eyeball roll, and getting into trouble with my parents for doing the same. It’s why today, when my teenagers or their friends do the same, instead of getting mad, I usually feel this overwhelming sympathy for them because I know they’re pissing off other adults all over the place.

Some get IRATE at me when I accidently make a face when im getting lectured, or accidently let my eyeballs slide around in my head when I’m annoyed…it’s like having inadvertent active bitch face and although I’ve learned how to keep my mouth shut, for the most part, when I need to, I still can’t keep my face shut. I occasionally find myself driving around with my hand over my mouth and when I realize what I’m doing, I get freaked out because I know it’s coming out of some kind of subconscious urge to put a mask on.

I just hope nobody ever finds me mindlessly grinning to myself in a parking lot.