Sunken beneath myriad stuffed animals, I would lovingly cling to the cotton cloth I dubbed pink blanky. Dragged along to school, road trips, and across the Atlantic, pink blanky followed closely behind my dependent 5 year old self. In times of crisis – usually the middle of the night – my blanky swore to protect me from witches and zombies, monsters and sandmen, vampires and mummies.
Today, my pink blanky has retired, my thumbs expanding its constantly sprouting holes. Its friends, Mufasa (I indeed named my stuffed lion Mufasa; that death traumatized me and he deserves to live on forever), Ellie the elephant, and Cotton Candy the kitten sit in my room as ghosts, given attention only by my need for an occasional nostalgia fix. Guards they are …show more content…
I followed this ritual like it was a family secret, a trick that kept my great-grandmother young and beautiful. Night after night I would commit myself to a makeup free face in the morning, just to prove that I could. And each morning I would wake up too tired-looking to remember that promise.
I watched my friends grow comfortable in their skin; I wondered what it would be like to start the day off without a fresh coat of mascara and concealer clogged pores. This summer, when I first walked into my job makeup-free, I feared someone would notice my drastic change in appearance. I knew I certainly looked different, but perhaps people were too fixated on their own flaws to notice my own.
At first, I fought with myself each morning. I took deep breaths and told myself that people didn’t care about an emerging zit or purple under eyes. But soon, it became thoughtless. Rarely have I felt the need to pull out my trusty mascara wand; I even attended a fancy dinner bare faced. I stopped wondering if people were looking at me differently. Sometimes, people made comments; I looked tired or pale. I would peruse the comment in my mind, it would bother me, and then it wouldn’t. My skin no longer felt sticky or congested. I was sleeping an extra 30 minutes. I forgot my exterior and discovered how freeing it felt to rub my eyes without smudging
Today, my pink blanky has retired, my thumbs expanding its constantly sprouting holes. Its friends, Mufasa (I indeed named my stuffed lion Mufasa; that death traumatized me and he deserves to live on forever), Ellie the elephant, and Cotton Candy the kitten sit in my room as ghosts, given attention only by my need for an occasional nostalgia fix. Guards they are …show more content…
I followed this ritual like it was a family secret, a trick that kept my great-grandmother young and beautiful. Night after night I would commit myself to a makeup free face in the morning, just to prove that I could. And each morning I would wake up too tired-looking to remember that promise.
I watched my friends grow comfortable in their skin; I wondered what it would be like to start the day off without a fresh coat of mascara and concealer clogged pores. This summer, when I first walked into my job makeup-free, I feared someone would notice my drastic change in appearance. I knew I certainly looked different, but perhaps people were too fixated on their own flaws to notice my own.
At first, I fought with myself each morning. I took deep breaths and told myself that people didn’t care about an emerging zit or purple under eyes. But soon, it became thoughtless. Rarely have I felt the need to pull out my trusty mascara wand; I even attended a fancy dinner bare faced. I stopped wondering if people were looking at me differently. Sometimes, people made comments; I looked tired or pale. I would peruse the comment in my mind, it would bother me, and then it wouldn’t. My skin no longer felt sticky or congested. I was sleeping an extra 30 minutes. I forgot my exterior and discovered how freeing it felt to rub my eyes without smudging