Introducing Leatherface

There's just so much on my mind right now. And really, it's pretty much impossible to stay focused and present right now. I just keep thinking about Peter and his parents and counting down the days when I see him again and sending internal rays of love to him in the meantime. I have a to-do list a mile long, and I can't quite bring myself to get going on it.

And, in this time of great enormity, all I can seem to do is focus on tiny, minuscule things. These frustrations that are so, so, so small in physical size, but arouse such large feelings.

Like the ants in my condo. No matter how many times I spray, or how many of those ant trap thingies (y'know...where they bring the poison back to the nest) I set out, they always reappear. Always in a different location. And I keep spraying and setting out more traps, and the next day they are lining the door of my shower, or following a chemical path along the edge of my kitchen counter, or swirling in their erratic functions around the base of my new apsara, and even finding their way into my teacher bag and laptop bag and gym bag and purse. I even bundle myself up at night--long-sleeved t-shirt, socks, sweatpants, with the comforter wrapped like a tortilla around this sweltering cotton burrito. If the ants found a way to penetrate this last barrier, I would just have to surrender and move my stuff to a small corner of the hallway outside, since they will have won fair and square.

The other little things that are bothering me? The tiny lines and freckles that have started to invade my face in the last few months. I am very obsessive about my sunblock, and never leave the house without SPF 55 slathered everywhere (and reapplied throughout the day!). Now, granted, I have very fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, and must therefore adopt the lifestyle of a vampire in order to keep my complexion happy. And though I have been very careful with my skin since the time I lived in Phoenix, and I always made a conscious effort to stay out of the sun when I was in high school and college, I wasn't always as careful as I should have been. If I could go back in time, I would hand my 16-year-old, porcelain-skinned self a bottle of SPF 8,000, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and some bug-eye glasses with 100% UV protection. And while 16-year-old me would have whined and protested and totally rejected 28-year-old me's oppressive (and probably somehow sexist) authority, man, while self-righteously tossing my blue hair over my shoulder (I was INSUFFERABLE as a teenager, can ya tell??), all 28-year-old me would have to do is point to the spiderweb of facial lines, and the freckles that were maybe adorable back when I was six, and 16-year-old me would dutifully apply sunblock to every exposed part of her body.

The thing is, though, that I think the sun out here is merciless. Most Thai people, while they are unbelievably wrinkle-free, have TONS of (soooo light and adorable) freckles. My hair has taken on the texture and color of someone who has given it entirely too many color treatments. Even the moles and freckles that I had already have gotten, um, bigger and darker (and yes, I do recognize that it's time to give the dermatologist a call). The fact that my skin has changed pretty dramatically in the last six months does freak me out quite a bit. But what is also freaking me out is my reaction to all of these changes. I always rolled my eyes at people who got Botox or lipo or spent a gazillion dollars on anti-aging creams. "Good grief!" I thought, while putting a hand to my youthful, wrinkle-free forehead, "Embrace your age! Who the hell wants to be 18 forever? Why can't people just freakin' grow old gracefully???" And who knows? Maybe if I had gotten my first wrinkle at the age of 38 instead of 28, I'd still stand by that perspective. But, HOLY CRAP, this is completely unhinging me.

It's hard watching the people we care about grow old, get sick, and die. And it's even harder when we start to see that we are also ants marching in our own mortality. And it's hard to grasp all of these life and death notions, the unpredictability of life, and the ultimate frailty of our physical beings. So while I am a little nervous that my boyfriend will catch a glimpse of me and go running in the opposite direction (as the last time he saw me was pre-wrinkle), I think it's pretty safe to say that my crazed, obsessive reaction to the appearance of wrinkles goes a little deeper than my vanity.

That said: does anyone have any fantastic suggestions for, um, minimizing these facial annoyances?? I am currently rockin' the retinol and the vitamin C and all kinds of other stuff....

I realize that I am coming off as sounding horrifically glib and superficial. And even rather self-absorbed. I think it's just the best I can do at the moment.