Woman Steals Youth!

The headline just blew me away, " Botox Bandit walks out without paying" !

A woman walks into a Houston spa, gets her injections to the tune of $2600. She walks out on the premise of getting her Amex Card never to return. Wisely she schemed leaving behind fictitious phone numbers, etc. The wrinkle in her plan was providing her before and after photos as evidence!

View the story at:
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=5986306

What bothers me about the comments following the above ABC13.com story is that they only addressed the subject of crime and the ability to prosecute. Are we missing the desperation in the motive, 'Woman Steals Youth!' ?

Beginnings

You are probably wondering what possessed me to embark on this quest.

At 42 I was healthy, in shape, running my own business and had no qualms grinding the pegs on my 1500cc Valkyrie.

At 52, well the doctor proposed that I take a diuretic last week. I am 40 pounds heavier, work at home in my yoga pants and won't even entertain the thought of getting on a motorcycle.

It doesn't matter that had I not suffered Grave's Disease and the subsequent radiation therapy I wouldn't be such a completely changed woman. That fact remains that I am changed and not for the better.

So I mourned myself. Not unlike many other women my age, I had to reassess, decide what was important to me and make the best of it.

I bought a camera...........................

Happily reunited with my lost love I carried my camera everywhere I went. Caressing it gently I attempted to acquaint myself with every nuance. I clicked the shutter at everything and everyone.

My subjects did not always share my enthusiasm. As they became aware of my presence, they ducked and dodged. Gravity, the heartless wretch, took her toll. Faces began to fall. First a grandmother kerplunked. Then a grandfather slam dunked. I decided to delete. After all, it was the kindest thing to do.

Delete! Delete! As I leaned to delete, I saw reflecting on the screen an image not so easily erased. It was my own fallen face!

Unknowingly, I had begun my quest the winter preceding the fallen face. That winter I had enrolled in a photo journal class.

Naively my expectations were to learn about photography. Ha! The instructor's first assignment was to take one photo of yourself and write (ouch!) a brief sentence or two to sum up who you were.

Maybe at some other point in my life I could have quickly come up with an answer. Perhaps a mother, a wife, a boss............You see the pattern. The answer would have been given in terms of who I was to others.

In the days and weeks that followed, my journal remained blank. My head spun. I was asked to share with a class of strangers who I was. I didn't know!

In the past, I hadn't really focused on my "self". As many women are today, my time was employed by my family, my business and least importantly my home. How I could have allowed the obligatory maintenance of an inanimate object sit in a position of more importance than my "self" is beyond me. In retrospect, my "self" had dissipated rather rapidly in the first few years of marriage. The question was why?????

I made my entry:

After having this revelation, I watched as the other students eagerly shared their photos and stories. My journal remained closed. I had yet to muster the courage to ashamedly admit to the world that "I" wasn't because "I" never believed "I" could!

I had wasted a half century.....................

I began to question everything in an effort to find my "self". So naturally on that sunny day when I saw my reflection, I had questions. I questioned why the image of my fallen face could not be erased. I became aware of my muscles relaxing and my skin falling loose. I became self conscious. I wondered.......Did others notice too?