She Doesn't Even Go Here

I don’t recognize her.

This is the statement that rolls around in my mind as I’m staring deadpan at myself in the mirror. Post-shower, red-faced, freckles popping, and eyes still smudged with the end of the day’s makeup. I don’t know her. I don’t recognize that thinning hair, that wider face and double chin. I pull my cheeks back, tucking my skin underneath my jaw for a moment.

There she is, I think. Just for a moment. I see a shadow of myself and it disappears into the edges of my rounded shoulders, my plus-size waist, my graying eyebrows.

My body feels a bit battered. A slow and yet prolific kidney disease and a slow and violent liver disease have held hands and decided to make a lifelong commitment to one another in my abdomen. “‘Til death to us part,” they whispered to one another (without my consent, mind you) and each MRI shows their steadiness to stick it out ‘til the end. All three organs grow and grow, slowing encroaching my other organs, slowing growing angry cysts, slowing pushing against nerves and all of the other necessities that call my abdomen “home.” It makes it harder to feel normal. The normal things become a little more difficult. Relief is a relative term. Comfort is fleeting.

Tired isn’t the word. Internally assaulted feels a bit more precise. Pain comes easy. Sleep comes slow. Audiobooks are my friend as I stare at the ceiling and feel the quiet rise and fall of my husband’s breathing next to me.

We had family photos recently. My dear and incredibly talented friend (who has been photographing my family for the last 10 years) did what she always did — made some kind of visual magic as we pretended it wasn’t awkward to walk around our property with a camera following us.

She captured my daughter’s glowing smile, my 8-year-old son in all his boyhood wonder, the dashing smirk of my husband, and me, right now.

Me in my disappointing body. Me in my dress that I hope covers up all of the things I hate about myself. Me and my growing abdomen. Me in my tired skin.

That’s me, I thought as I looked at the photos. I don’t recognize her.

And yet, in each image, as I look closely, I see she did catch my husband’s sincere smile at me. My daughter’s joy, laughing with me. My son gripping my face in his hands for a kiss. And that, my friends, is me too. They are a part of me. I can look at these photos and see what we’ve built and fought for with one another and clearly say “I recognize that.” Captured forever even as time erases memories, echoes, and bodies.

Aging is inevitable, disease or not. My body was once 16, 20, 32, and now 41 and the road goes ever on and on. I don’t recognize myself these days but the truth is, I’ve never met myself at this age either. I need to make friends with her if we’re going to continue on. I need to hold her widening and wrinkled face in my hands and tell her she’s loved, not just by the people in those photographs but by the One who slowly built her together piece by piece, fashioning her with his patient care. He is not interested in my eternal youth, but he can forge my eternal joy and I’d much rather lean on that.

I hope some day my children won’t remember that “Mom was always in pain” but instead remember that “Mom always tried to laugh” — no matter what — aging and suffering, autumn leaves and ducks, double chin and all.