It Happened to Me: Dissolving My Fillers Went Terribly Wrong

This photo was taken by Scarleth Marie. I don’t even take selfies anymore, let alone allow someone else to photograph my face so you could actually see it. Sorry.

I’ve always been considered pretty. My mother was considered the most beautiful woman to have ever come out of our county in Virginia. And it wasn’t an ugly county, mind you. I grew up thinking that the most valuable thing I could contribute to the world would be the ability to walk into a room and have everyone immediately know that I was the most beautiful one in there — besides my mother, if she was there. She was always allowed to win that competition. But I needed to at least be second to feel like I got her praise and that she saw my value.

Here I am now, 40 years after that realization and eight years after my mother passed away (still beautiful and still impeccably made up), with a big lump on the left side of my lower lip and another smaller bump on my right cheekbone near my eye, and some scars on my face that I’m told will never fully go away. And it’s all because of what I did to myself to try to be the most beautiful…