That Time I Accidentally Shaved Off Half my Eyebrow.

There is a skin treatment called dermaplaning, in which a person, preferably one with skin, uses a specialized straight razor to exfoliate the skin and peach fuzz on their face. 

This is an especially handy technique when a select few peach fuzzies decide to take a sabbatical, three inches due west from the surface of one’s face.

The dermaplaining can be done at home, but take care around your eyebrows!!
The technique is also used to shape said eyebrows, but like, don’t sneeze, and don’t look away for even the briefest moment. 

Exhibit A shows what happens if you do. 

The top half is gone. You can see the shadow of where it used to be.

Thankfully, a paintbrush is a paintbrush, and a pencil is a pencil, so I’ve successfully drawn my eyebrow back on for the last four weeks.

I assume it’s been a success because no one has said, “What’s wrong with your eyebrows?”
At least not to my face. 

When I first realized what I had done, I stood there in a horrified stupor for thirty seconds before breaking out into hysterical laughter because, of course, I would take this basic procedure and make it ridiculous. 
When have I ever not made something ridiculous? 

In fact, some days, I think ridiculous should have been my middle name. That or Silly Von Silly Pants. And while today I can laugh at myself AND tell everyone about it so they too can giggle, I didn’t arrive here lightly or without any struggle. 

 If I had a nickel for every time someone well-intentioned took me aside for a private chat to say - “If you could get a little more serious about “x,” you could really go far,” I’d have roughly $0.47.

It didn’t happen every day or even every year, but it’s been a theme. 

I would find a thing I was moderately good at, but in my own way and with my signature silliness attached, and inevitably, I’d get “The Speech.”

Sadly, for the well-intentioned speech giver, this has been my cue to pack my metaphorical bags and do a hot boogie out of there. Whether it be a new job, a new sport, a hobby, a relationship, fill in the blank - I’d be in the wind, regardless of what I had to give up to make it onto the next train out of there.

While some of this reflex was certainly a fear of success with a healthy dose of self-sabotage, the fact remains:

I am silly.

And if my silliness isn’t welcome, then I need to go.

If there is a newspaper lying about, I will read the funny pages before going in for the dry, chapped rehash of all the bad things in the world if I bother with that part.

I will choose a comedy over a dark, sad, period-piece drama.

I’m going to laugh at a funeral, likely during the quietest part.

I will make the inappropriate joke - because they are the funniest.

I’m going to dance a silly jig if it will get a smile instead of attempting to look cool.

Regardless of what the deliverer of “The Speech” was saying, all I’ve ever heard was, “You’re too much, and we need you to not only stay inside this specific box but cram yourself in there a little tighter,”
Ignoring the fact that the box was an airless void with no room for anything different or unique and that I am, nor was I ever, box-shaped. 

As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned how and where to find the places where my silliness fits, where my box, which is not a box but a Santa Clause sack of balloons, horns, toys, and inappropriate jokes, and foul language can live in harmony with the other sparkle ponies.

The issue is that each time I’ve moved on or smiled when someone said, “Oh my gosh, you are soooo funny,” but it wasn’t a compliment. I’ve done so with an intact sense of self but with a hint of shame.
A hint of “not good enough as is.”

This shame was as easy to ignore as pocket lint, to the point that I didn’t even know it existed until I saw this tribute from Gene Wilder to Richard Pryor.
The final part hit home for me.

Gene loved and adored Richard because he was silly, and he never apologized for it.

Those words hit me dead center, right in the sternum, with a sound that a bass drum would make.

While I never physically apologized for my silliness, I did accept the judgments and accusations of my character as being “too silly” as fact.
I did leave, for not being enough as is.

And then, I found the business of being a “working artist” and have never taken anything more seriously.

The irony is not lost.

The difference is that being an artist and surrounding myself with people who use gold glitter duct tape as their everyday tape is the first time I’ve not gotten “The Speech.”

These folks, these artists, are not made of cardboard; they do not fit on the pre-measured shelves; they are made of glitter, glue, and every shade of the color wheel.

My humor, my jokes, my dances fit.

I fit.

I don’t have to apologize even silently for being too loud or too much. In fact, in the face of comparison, I am pretty fucking vanilla next to some of the superstars I get to call colleagues.  

A true sparkle pony

My point, then, is this - 

If you are not a box but a sparkle pony, a bag of tricks, or a dancing queen.
Don’t apologize for who you are, even silently.
Even if you don’t feel like you fit. 
Even if you accidentally shave off an eyebrow. 
(Which is oddly easy to do)

Rest secure in the knowledge that when the right thing comes along, it will allow you to “get serious” and be so wholly yourself that no one (within that realm) will attempt to show you the way.
(Other assholes will absolutely try.)
(They are called trolls, and we ignore them).

They (the ones who understand) will sit back and watch you glow as you do your silly little jig to get the other silly people to giggle at the most inappropriate time possible.    

Have you found your fit?
Where is it?
Are you still searching? 
What does it look like?