No, really, there is more.

As the brackets normalise, I immediately shift my attention to the site of the Botox. I have it heard is said, ‘What you focus on grows,’ and hoo boy, is that true or what. I wake up on Saturday: I skip the iPhone camera update, but I immediately begin to worry that my riding hat is going to…

To? Bash all the Botox in my forehead — which isn’t hardly any at all, I think just two injections worth — bash it all about and what, what? Make it leak all down my face? Out my eyes? Running out of my mouth like, like… I should probably chuck it all in, the beauty lark, the book writing, and start doing horror films.

I begin to think and to worry and to wonder about what is essentially two square inches of facial area, and it takes over my entire being.

Thoughts. Powerful things.

***

I’ve been the Louise L Hay route. I’ve done all the things that I was supposed to do, to ‘make’ me love myself as I was. I suppose the thing is that I perceived it to be ‘making’ myself do something, which is not very spiritual. The one thing that I have done in the last ten years, that has ‘made’ me love myself, has been taking up horseriding. For an active but not athletic middle-aged lady, to take up a sport and enjoy it and become competent enough at it so that it is fun and challenging and joyfull-making — well, it was just the best thing ever. The best because it heals all parts of me.

Physically: getting fit and feeling strong. Spiritually: being around the horses themselves, who are powerful in oh, so many ways. Emotionally: centred and still, because if you’re freaking out around the horses, then they freak out. Once you see how you can be serene around them, well, what’s stopping you from carrying that through to every area of your life? Mentally: my first and best experience of my mind getting to rest, relax, and engage in the present moment, and only the present moment.

So, the mind that actually is chilled á la maximum during horseriding is getting all swirly because if I can’t wear that hat, then I can’t ride, and if I can’t ride, then I will actually go crazy.

***

I have a headache. The headache is centred around my Botox. I get on the bus anyway, and I head out to meet my lift to the yard. I do not try on the hat at home: if there is any teeny tiny squinchy feeling, I won’t get on that bus, and won’t get to my lift, and I won’t get to the yard. I am going horseriding, leaking mouth poison bedamned.

I get there, strap on my body protector, I gently, gently lower the hat onto my head. I shift it around a bit, close the strap, and am immediately distracted from my out-of-control thoughts, because I have to ride a horse, and the last thought I have before I get up there in the saddle is I won’t be falling off today, thanks.

And so I don’t. I am occasionally distracted for a second or two throughout the course of the lesson, distracted by the Botox, but I stay with it, I stay with the good stuff, and, as Louise would say, all is well.

***

Nobody notices anything different about my face.