You know something's wrong when even a good tube of mac lipstick won't do the trick. Today I thought a little touch of lip color might make me cute, might give my washed out face a lift. mac used to pick my face up on drab days, but today it didn't even make a dent. 'allure' couldn't even pretend to replace any of the juice that's been sucked out of me in the last 11+ months since I sacrificed any last vestiges of The Rachel Show to become a baby buncher: pushing the pedal to the maternal metal with two under two in order to give them to one another. The toll on my physical body has become apparent each time my fading ego stares into the mirror and sees frayed, squiggly grays coming in, brand new sunken-sometimes-swollen circles under my eyes, and a general sense of dullness pervade my once shiny face. This year's altruistic doling out of my life force for the growth of my boys has leaked a tremendous amount of my inner and outer vitality, which is a beautifully hard-to-swallow thing all at once.
Beautiful because it's what I'm made for: procreation. My body is entirely geared towards propagation of the species and I've now fulfilled the first chapter of that feat. So I do feel a tremendous amount of accomplishment and pride, having successfully performed my evolutionary duties. Beautiful because I get to feel and give such tremendous love to my children. Beautiful because I am Mother -there is no more meaningful, immediate, challenging and rewarding title on the planet.
Hard-to-swallow however because unfortunately my very humanly-faulted ego also houses itself in this humanly-faulting body that is now finally slooooowing down and (((gasp))) aging. I used to happily anticipate waking up in the morning, hopping out of the bed at the crack of stupid to hike or walk for hours. Now I lie with earplugs and pillows barricading my head, blankets pulled up to my nose, praying for just an hour more peace and quiet in the early morning before I must start my daily rigamarole. And I wait at least an hour after waking to glance into the mirror to see what state my face is in, hoping beyond hope my right eyelid isn't drooping any further.
My ego and I have the following conversation something like every other day now:
Ego: "You're not cute anymore."
Me: "I'm not supposed to be 'cute' right now! I'm being a mother of two very young boys!"
Ego: "You're not pretty anymore."
Me: "My prettiness drained out my left boob nursing N. Shut up!"
Ego: "You're not sexy anymore."
Me: "My sexiness spiraled down the sink with the last 5 nights of endless dishes!"
Enough. You get the drift. All I'm saying here is that I either need a new shade of mac or an attitude adjustment. Oh please, you know that's not true. What I really need is a new shade of mac and an attitude adjustment. Thanks for your patience and witnesship as I remedied today's malady. :)
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Sometimes a new shade of lipstick (or a shopping spree in my case) can bring about an attitude adjustment. And then wa-la, you've arrived. It really is that easy. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you. It's so hard - it seems when ever I'm able to make myself look halfway decent I get a gallon of spit up running down my back or peanut butter mashed into my pants.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I can't say enough good things about under-eye concealer. It makes me look almost human.