Day 1 - This Isn't So Hard!

The curse has been lifted!  24 years ago a friend decided to play makeup artist on my face.  I remember how foreign it felt on my skin, like I was wearing clown makeup.  How quickly, however it became my permanent mask.

There has always been a part of me that curses that moment for it was on that day that my natural face no longer lived up to what an inch of foundation, and tonnes of mascara and eyeliner could do - make me not look like my plain self.  And over the decades I have looked longingly at women who could go without.  How free they looked, how they glowed.  I kid you not, I worked at a dry cleaners once and a customer came in and as we chatted she grabbed a small tube of lotion from her purse and rubbed it all over her face!!!  SHE PUT IT ON HER FACE!!!!  "What about her makeup?!?!", a tiny voice inside me cried.  I was so envious, "that is Utopia", I thought.

But today I am one of those women!!!  I walked out of my house without a smidge of camouflage on.  Out in the open for the beauty terrorists to attack and I survived!  All those visions I had of people screwing up their faces as they looked at me, or being stopped by some TV crew wanting to give me a makeover cause I was too tired and haggard looking melted away.  No panic attack, no crying fits.  In fact I proudly looked people in the eye and said hello with my naked face bared for all to see.

And how beautiful when co-workers and friends checked in to encourage me...or maybe partially out of curiosity to see if I'd actually gone through with it.  And also to see some of the beautiful women letting their true faces show for all their colleagues to see!

What's my lesson today?  I think today I will just enjoy the fact that I was able to do it!  There were a few times I longed for just even a little under eye concealer and I had to smirk when I met up with a gentleman friend and one of the first things he said when we got close was "so what's with this makeup May?" He claims it's because he saw my Facebook photo and, for the sake of my ego, I will choose to go with that and not the likely reality that he wasn't sure who was approaching him until I said hello.