Cosmetics

I went to the beutician today to do my bi-weekly epilation. I do it on Friday mornings which are my only free mornings during the week and I always feel a little bit bitter that I have to spend time doing a painful treatment instead of just being outside or meeting friends. But the cosmetician woman is nice and fun to talk to so I pretend to just be meeting a fried who happens to like to poke needles into my face for two hours and then take my money. I can sometimes cheat myself that way.

Lately she has sometimes mentioned that in addition to the epilation, I might want to do something about the rddening of my skin in the nose and chin area. I always nod (as much as I can while laying down with a needle stuck inti my chin) and igonre her. The reddening never bother me before she began to mention it and I had no intention of paying more money that I don’t have in order to treat it. i did end up asking a family doctor that I went to for something else, if he had any advice and he gave me the name of some cream that I can rub in. So fine, I bought it and I halfheartedly use it every fe days, and change my mind a lot regarding whether it’s making any difference.

So today the beutician asked me if I minded if she would put on some peeling cream on me while we were doing my eyebrows, just on my nose. I didnt really want to, really didn’t believe in the effect and was a bit fearful that it would do something that would do some damage even, but I said fine, what the hell. It was a very long epilation treatment and by the time she got to the eyebrows and the cream, I was pretty fed up with the whole thing and wanted to go home as quickly as poissible. Then I noticed that she was putting cream all over my face and when she askedif it wa burning and I said "a bit" she took it off and put another cream all over me and even took out this net thingy and draped it on the cream I guess to hold it in place.

At this point I started to tear up a little bit and at this point i’m trying to figure out – what exactly I was crying about? I guess I was a little fed up at all of the touching. I had signed up for an hour and a half of touching and got two hours of uncomfortable touching. It was like being way too long in a crowded elvator. You feel trapped.

I was also feeling very trapped mentally. i really didn’t want to damn cream on me yet I had let myself be tricked into getting it. I had just agreed – not really agreed – to get a bit of cream on my nose and suddenly I was here looking ridiculous like a white faced clown that got tangled in a fish net. And I was thinking – there goes my friendly arangement with my cosmetician/ Now instead of the friend I imagined I will have some coercove saleslady always trying to shove beauty products down my throat and me always having to resist and I’m not very assertive in nature so whenever I try to be assertive it ends up being rude and making a bad atmosphere. So I would have to stop doing the epilation with her because I can stand to have a salesperson working at my face with a needle. I hate being approached by any kind of salesperson anyway. I makes me feel trapped and caged in and crowded.

So I told her politely to please get the effing cream off of me, I was like, it’s not for me, please let’s get rid of it and she was like "No, please try it, see how wonderful you’re going to look" and I was like, I don;t care, I don’t want this. And she’s like "But it doesn’;t look good with the redness" And I’m like in mysmall polite voice "Yeah, wekk that’s your problem thepeople who have to see it. I see OUT of this face so I don;t give a damn how it looks, just leave me alone".

And hen I started to really cry. Because I really 0 I don’t really have any aspiration to be especially beautiful. I was born with a nice face but I don’t really work at the beauty. The detail of clothes, creams, it bores me to tears. Sport is painful and boring as well. But really – I don’t want to be an embarrasment coming out of the house. I just don’t want people to think ewwwww.

But i’m a woman, and i’m not 20 anymore. And if you don’t suffer as a not-20-any-more woman and spend all kinds of weird hours doing things to yourself, you’re going to be ewww. You’re going to be "how dare she leave the house" in the eyes of many people and really, I see how people want to look at something pretty. I’m nopt sure it’s fair to make them look at something ugly. I don’t need to be beautiful but I don’t want to be someone people feel like they have to pay a mental price to look at.

But the redness… I never had a problem with that. I never thought it was such a big deal. And I went to the butician to feel better about myself.. I wasn’t supposed to spend two hours getting poked and them leave there feeling worse, no? Part of their jb it to get me out of there feeling beutiful no matter how I really look – no?

So while I was there I  I had this vision of how my hours at the beutician and beuticians of all sorts I would have to be going to and how crowded and trapped and ugly I was going to hae to feel and how it would never be over. I would just get older and therefore even less a peace with my face while the time at the beuticians of all sorts would just get longer and longer and take up more and more of my free time and sanity.What a wasted life…

Which is when I started to cry even harder. And I told the beutician why i was crying. Not that she made me feel trapped bu aout the second part and she answered.

"Yeah… well it’s true we’re all getting older and uglier. But at least we’re not sick! You think you have problems? Some people are sick!"

Yes.

I’m not sick. My life is really at it’s peak right now. Everyone around is healthy and functioning. We all have jobs and enough money and while our country is being run by a bunch of doucebags, we are at least not currently as of  this minute the last time I checke in war, and it’s not the holocoust.

So, if I find that the task of making me appearence acceptable and a lot of other regular ife tasks to be horribly draining, much more touch that I ever though they would be or should be as a child, and I feel that I can’t cope faily often…. then how will I be able to deal if something real actually happened?