What Makes You Different

My right eyebrow is lower than my left one.

(Please note: I hereby give you permission to stare at my face the next time you see me in public. You're going to anyway, but at least now you don't have to feel badly about it.)

I used to think of this the other way around, that my left eyebrow was higher than my right one, but I've come to the conclusion that, no, my right eyebrow is lower.

Until recently, I thought that this was just a result of the distribution of hair follicles, that this was the way my eyebrows grew. It was kind of embarassing, and it was especially noticable, I thought, when I would wear my glasses.  I compensated by hiding behind masses and masses of hair -- I'd wear it long, and it was frequently in my face.  Eventually, I would get contacts. No one would notice now, I thought. Problem solved!

And then I cut off all of my hair. Every last security blanket inch of it.

And there they were. Crooked eyebrows.

My genius hairdresser and I decided that we could make this less obvious with assymetrical bangs. It works, mostly.

However.

I mentioned that I thought this was a hair follicle issue "until recently".

Because recently, I realized that the issue isn't hair follicles. The issue is that my skull is deformed. And kids, let me tell you, this is not something you want to discover about yourself. Especially not at 6 AM with just a whiff of coffee running through your system.

Here's what happened: I was putting on my eyeliner, and I always have trouble with winging out the liner on my right eye. The left eye is not a problem. The right eye is -- it gets smudged very easily.

"It's like there's not enough room over there," I muttered to myself, staring in the mirror. Then I stepped closer to the mirror in mild shock as I realized: There ISN'T as much room over there.

That eye is set in completely differently than my right eye. It sits more deeply in my head.

To be honest, I had noticed this in my most recent Facebook profile picture, but I thought it was a trick of the light and the fact that I was angling my head to detract from the crooked eyebrows.

It's not hair follicles at all. It's the browbone. It's the structure of my skull on that whole side of my head. Which, actually, explains a lot, like why my glasses always feel crooked, and why I wear out frames on that side more easily.

My noggin is all askew.

I'm certain that this has been the case my whole life, and that I'm only now noticing because I wanted to do something fun with my eyeliner. Unfortunately, what has been seen cannot be unseen, and now, at the age of 36-almost-37, I feel like a complete freak.

Of course, the good news is that I have ALWAYS felt like a freak, so this is not a new sensation.

I probably shouldn't have pointed any of this out -- I'm thinking that if I hadn't mentioned it, probably no one would have noticed, given the fact that I look at my face every day and I only recently noticed --and I'm NOT doing it because I want reassurance that "No, you look TOTALLY NORMAL".

I'm doing it because I want to point out that we all have weird things about ourselves that we have to learn to live with. Sometimes it's a deformed skull, sometimes it's an uncontrollable tic, sometimes it's a history that is painful and sad. Whatever your thing is, you need to own it. You need to wear it with pride.

So, yes, my right eyebrow is lower than my left one.

What's your deal?