“List any past surgeries.”

It’s always there. On every blank page when visiting a new doctor’s office or massage therapist. I always internally wince when I have to list my past experience going under the knife.

I’m just about to turn 30 and I’ve had more than half a dozen surgeries on my eyelid. My eyelid.

I was just a baby when my parents spotted hemangioma on my right eye. Because it was in such an unusual location doctor’s couldn’t just cut and be done. While my body slowly started to grow, I underwent a series of treatments to reduce the size of the thing, but it never really went away. I knew because of the constant reminders from kids at school, who would often poke fun at my funny eye.

“What’s wrong with your eye?” They’d ask.

It wasn’t until I was 13 and had taken more than a dozen trips to UCLA that my doctor finally approved the surgery. I still remember the moment I woke up from under the anesthesia, the nurse forcing me to open my eyes and stay awake when all I wanted was to sleep.

More than a decade since it was removed once and for all, I’m still self-conscious of the tiny little differences between the left eyelid and the right. When I was dating, I would make sure never to close my eyes with a partner until I really knew them — knew they wouldn’t make fun of the eyelid on the right.

Without my doctor, I probably would still have that “strawberry mark,” as some people call it, bursting out of my eye. Or I might have been blind in the right eye. The mark often isn’t harmful in many cases, but in my experience it could have been.

The story my mom always likes to tell is how the doctor saved my eyelashes. “She’s probably going to want those someday.” Yes, I definitely wanted them.

Every morning, I get to put on mascara without thinking too much about my lashes, or my eyelids. But it’s always a tiny little reminder of how lucky I am and how special my eyes really are. Yes, they’re different but I love that about me.