I Must Have Been Ugly

Forgive me if I've posted on this topic before... I keep meaning to, and my short term memory still isn't quite up to par...

One of the more humorous regular occurrences of this ordeal is the sheer volume of people who find it necessary, sometimes on a near daily basis, to compliment my appearance. The school nurse in the hallway, the substitute teacher working with me yesterday, friends we haven't seen in a couple of weeks... all of them utter my new favorite phrase, "Wow, you look really good!" I have gotten so practiced at receiving the comment, I can practically see it coming out of people's mouths before they know they're going to utter it. There's always a slow pause, the inevitable head to toe glance over, a brief hesitation, then it blurts out and is almost immediately followed by a sometimes not-so-subtle cringe. Some people are rather dramatic.

At first I didn't think much of it, took the compliments, ran with them. Now that this has been going on for six months or so, I must say it's making me a bit uneasy. Lately I hear the favored phrase and add a parenthetical thought at the end "(because you were hideous before.)" Realistically, I know this isn't the case, but I'm hearing things so often, I can't help but hear the thought bubbles I imagine emerging above people's heads. The sheer level of shock and surprise uttered by these well-meaning folks is probably the stimulus of my brain's chemical reaction to their phrases, but I've never been one to curtail my mind's wild tangents (100 of you just rolled your eyes all too knowingly). The last times I received this many compliments were in the days following the births of my kids (and yeah, we all know people lie to you then) and on my wedding day (Eric said I was gorgeous, and frankly, that's all that mattered... though now I'm wondering if he was lying then too....) Is this new found attractiveness a chemo side effect? I think not. I just must have been uglier before... clearly that's the only rational explanation.

Anyway, the good news is this has given me the perfect title for a book, if I ever write one. It needs a little tweaking (and probably a subtitle or parenthesis because otherwise it's just not me), but I think Before Cancer I Was Ugly would definitely stand out on a bookshelf.

By the way, I look really good today.

Carpe diem (and look good doing it). - Trela