Getting Used To You

As Sarah and I walked the boulevard today, I reached up to touch my face, realizing that in the rush of getting out the door to meet her I forgot to put on foundation. As I felt my face flush from our brisk walk, I said aloud that I’d forgotten.

“I thought you gave up makeup,” she said, in reference to my August 5^th decision.

“I did. Foundation’s not makeup,” I replied. “It’s colored moisturizer.”

She laughed, and I admitted that I’d cheated, almost always wearing foundation throughout the whole ordeal, wearing a ‘full face’ of makeup when I sang at two different funerals (sparkly eye shadow and everything!), and  wearing a touch of mascara for a few of the days, especially recently.

“I think I’m ready to give up giving up makeup,” a said as I ducked under a low-hanging tree branch bordering the sidewalk.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know, giving up makeup was really hard. For the first month it sucked. I didn’t want to look in the mirror because I looked terrible. Wearing makeup every day since I was 13 had trained me never to get used to what I looked like without it. But now, it’s not so bad. It took almost two months, but I’ve finally gotten used to seeing myself without makeup. This isn’t to say that I finally think I look better without makeup, but simply that I don’t feel rotten and unpresentable if I don’t wear it. Not to mention, not wearing makeup came in really handy when I gave up Conroy.”

Even my hairdresser says that she tries to go at least one day a week without makeup for this reason alone. “Women aren’t comfortable with themselves anymore because they are never purely themselves for most of their adult lives.”

And as I think I’ll officially give up giving up makeup, I realize that this may have been the point all along. The point isn’t that it’s wrong to spend $20 on a tube of hypoallergenic blackest black mascara. The point isn’t that that makeup won’t be acceptable at Shelter50 (where I’ll take up residence come November). The point isn’t that I made a decision to give up something and now I can’t turn my back on it. The point is that it’s possible to retrain your mind how to view yourself. Sometimes what you once thought was terrible is really neither terrible or beautiful; it’s just you, and it’s never a bad idea to get used to you.