Well, here we are. One week out.

In a handful of days, I’ll be in California.

A couple of days after that, I’ll be under the knife.

My brain has been in what you might charitably call “a state.” In addition to planning and managing all of the moving parts of a cross-continental trip, I’ve also been focusing on the fine and coarse details of getting everything sorted out for my medical clearance and insurance authorization for the aforementioned trip, and occasionally taking a break from all of that to speculate about the somewhat gnarly specifics of my upcoming Special Guest Star role in a remake of the Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the episode, you can just click on the Wikipedia link to get a synopsis, but if you can find it streaming online—many platforms have The Twilight Zone available—it’s worth watching. Like many TZ episodes, the plot turns on a particular twist which may seem a little hokey to our jaded, adult 21st century eyes, but was still pretty shocking when I first saw it as a wee slip of a girl in the 1970s.

If you continue reading from this point, I’m assuming you’ve seen it, or spoiled yourself with Wikipedia. You’ve been warned.

So, yeah. I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about this episode, and about that jarring moment when Maxine Stuart is unmasked to reveal Donna Douglas under the bandages, followed by a series of smash cuts to the other medical staff in the room, who look a bit like Boris Karloff in prosthetic “old-school D&D orc” makeup. I think about that moment, and I wonder who the hell thought it was a good idea to let a kid watch that TV show, because all I can think now is, oh gods, what if they unwrap my head and I look like a truffle-hunting Uruk-hai?

Welcome to my brain.

More seriously, though, it’s starting to actually sink in that this… is… happening. This is real. In roughly the same amount of time from now as a caffeine-fuelled marathon of all the modern Doctor Who episodes and specials, I’ll be waking up (much too early for my liking), showering (and washing myself with a scary chlorhexidine body wash), dressing in something comfortable, and being driven to a hospital where I’ll be COVID-swabbed before sitting down to have a nice chat with my surgeon, who I’ll be meeting for the very first time. Then, I’ll change into something somewhat less comfortable, get jabbed with an IV, and sit around for a while before they decide to wheel my silly self into an operating room. Then, they’ll give me the good drugs, and I’ll start counting backwards from some number I won’t even be able to remember because I’ll suddenly be in a recovery room, coming back to consciousness, swathed in bandages and high as a kite, and it’ll be all over but the recovery.

This is, as you might imagine, incredibly weird.

A GIF of David Tennant looking out of frame and saying, with a dubious look, “Bit weird.” He then looks straight at the camera and makes an “eugh” sort of facial expression.

However, as weird as this all is, I have to find a way to shelve the weirdness for the next few days, because I have Things to Do:

• Laundry. Oh, gods, so much laundry.
• Meds: securing, double-checking, packing.
• Finalizing cat care.
• Getting spare keys made.
• Miscellaneous paperwork things.
• Dishes and other house-tidying things.
• Packing. All the packing. Pack all the things!

…and like that. I’d be more stressed by this list of chores and responsibilities, but it’s actually helpful to have a full docket. I don’t have time to stress about medical procedures or to fret about whether I’ll be a pretty girl once a semi-random stranger has taken a scalpel (and other tools) to my face; I have to make sure my kittens will be fed!

If beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, so too are all other subjective states: fear, insecurity, anxiety, dread. Maybe it’s okay to live, at least temporarily, in a liminal state of not knowing what I’ll look like in two weeks’ time, of not knowing how well I’ll handle my pain eight days from now, of not knowing how people will react to my new face. Maybe it’s okay to feel a bit like Maxine Stuart, swaddled under all that gauze, hoping that my big reveal will be less Boris Karl-orc-ff (see what I did there? that’s called a callback!) and more Donna Douglas, or at least my own twin sister. She would’ve been kinda cute, I think, even at 50.

Only one way to find out, I guess.

Anyway, this post is far more “Tamsin uploads her brain-fluff” than earlier installments. This is just me woolgathering, rambling, letting my brain kinda spiral out on things, and I think that’s okay. I don’t always have a point to make, a moral to offer, or a tidy hat-trick wrap-up to perform for an appreciative audience.

Here, have a creepy picture of a beholder instead.

I hope you’re all doing well and moving into the Western new year from a place of security and safety. Further updates as events warrant.

https://reimaginedgirl.com/2023/12/29/eye-of-the-beholder-t-7/

#beholder #dungeonsDragons #eyeOfTheBeholder #howToBeAGirl #maundering #operationPolymorph #theTwilightZone #thinkyThoughts

I was raised with the white boomer liberal idea of “the cure for bad speech is more speech!”

Now my thinking is that, while it’s critical not to shy away from unfamiliar perspectives, some level of filtering is how you *get* more speech.

Defederating from an instance that amplifies people who are already culturally “loud” at the expense of those who are unheard doesn’t deny me any points of view I would be lacking.

#FreeSpeech #maundering