accepting my own skin.

it takes an enormous stretch of my imagination to fathom this truth:
in less than a month, i will be thirty years old.  3-0.  thirty.

i have heard (from people who, no doubt, are also attempting to come to terms with the fact that their twenties are over) that the thirties are awesome.  suddenly, you don't care what people think of you anymore!  suddenly, you are comfortable with yourself, content in your own skin, a real developed person!

i can't wait.

jokes aside, i do hope for this.  and i hope, after the past couple of dreadful years, that maybe i have finally learned how to make better decisions.  that maybe i will learn to love myself and treat myself with respect.  that my size and shape won't determine my self-image, and that i will let myself be a real person - also known as having grace for myself, and others.

there is at least one practical way that i am already changing, already accepting myself more.  it concerns a little thing called makeup, or as i like to call it, super-fun art for the face!!
i grew up with makeup all around me...literally.  my mom loved glamour.  she was a makeup artist and (oh 80's trends!) an image consultant.  she did 'colours' for women so that they could learn what colours looked best with their skin tones (p.s. it actually makes a huge difference!), and she wanted to help people feel good about themselves.  and she did.  but whether it's the times a-changin' or just me a-changin', i don't believe (as she and so many other women did) that a woman shouldn't leave the house without 'putting on her face'. 

i loved, and still love, to play with makeup.  i love to put it on others.  it is a little-known fact about me that i have taken courses in makeup artistry.  it is just fun.  i've never personally been one to wear a lot of makeup (lipstick in particular tends to look awful on me), but i have consistently worn it since i was, oh, thirteen or so.  it became something that i needed to feel good about myself...or just to feel like myself!  as my friends know, i have had a love affair with liquid eyeliner for at least 10 years, and it got to the point that i looked weird to myself if i wasn't wearing any.  i was trapped by my own consistency!  if i dared to go a day without wearing any eye makeup, the inevitable consensus was that i looked so tired!  people weren't sure why, but it was clear that heather was exhausted and needed to be asked many times if she was feeling ok.  

truth be told, my eyelashes are invisible.  they are the colour of nothing, and they stick straight out, so if i'm not wearing any mascara, i look like maybe i tried lighting a gas stove to my own detriment.  or maybe i'm sick.  or really, really tired.

what's weird is that i'm becoming okay with it.  me, heather, on the cusp of my 30th birthday, may be proving all those people right who say that 30 is the magic number! 
don't get me wrong:  i still love makeup.  but my husband can testify to the fact that i regularly go without any makeup at all, whole days even!, and that i appear to be able to handle it just fine.  to not care, if you will!

so what happened? 
i'll let you know when i figure it out.


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