Last blooming

I'm into my fifth week as an unwoman a post-operative hysterectomy patient, and I can tell you, it's an interesting experience to be surgically so altered. Things you never noticed before, and things you'd never really thought much about, suddenly enter your mind, like Penelope's houseguests, and stay there.

I'm not entirely sure I should be writing about this, and I'm sure Dorothy will be speaking sternly to me about it later, but obviously that has never really stopped me before.

Oddly, I think in terms strictly of physical appearance, I am prettier now than I have been in years. Between nausea and indifference, I have lost enough weight to fit into clothes that have been haunting my wardrobe like ghosts of youth for fifteen years. The other day I wore a very long woolen pencil skirt that was two sizes too small when I bought it but which I had intended to take apart and rework as a shorter skirt. This weekend I just put it on and zipped it up. And a rather nice tweed suit I've had since the mid-90s now fits in both pieces after I had been wearing the jacket with other things for years.

By fluke, the short haircut, shorter than I have ever had my hair before even as an infant, seems to be exceptionally flattering and after an adolescence and early adulthood plagued with bad skin, I have achieved the kind of flawlessness I only dreamed of when it mattered. They told me at 18 that having oily, blotchy skin in youth would work out much better in later life, but it seemed irrelevant then. Still more, I seem to have an odd glow that I don't remember noticing before. Maybe it's the almond oil, but I'm more inclined to think it is something to do with the strangely altered chemistry. I can't imagine it will last long.