Mirror, Mirror

Being shy of 60 by about two months, I was feeling  like I was looking pretty good ‘for my age’.  All that oily skin in my teen years, thank you Italian heritage, finally paying off by keeping the wrinkles at bay.  My 11’s seemed barely visible (proving that SJP and And Just Like That is not just entertaining but also educational).  There were a few slight crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes, and minimal laugh lines.  My neck was another story though, with quite visible wrinkles and sagging skin.  But hey.  That’s what scarves and turtlenecks are for.

So back to the face.  As I was saying, I was feeling pretty good.  That is, until the other day when I needed to use my reading glasses to apply my lip liner. 

Now, mind you, I haven’t worn much makeup at all since pre-Covid.  And when I would wear make-up, I wouldn’t usually wear lipstick, let alone a lip liner.  Too high maintenance for me.  I mean, no sooner have you applied it and it’s wearing off.  Kind of like the way a new car starts to depreciate in value as soon as you drive it off the lot.  Only faster. A lot faster.

Anyway, I bought some new lip gloss, because I think a little pop of color will do me good.  It came with a lip liner (more to come on that purchase in a later blog post).

I realized that I couldn’t see well enough to apply the lip liner without my reading glasses.

I put them on, looked in the mirror….and recoiled in horror.  Who was that? Was that me? Was that how I really looked?  What I thought were faint, minor wrinkles turned out to be deep, vast crevasses to rival the Grand Canyon.  Suddenly there were these gaping pores like massive black holes from outer space.  There were veins on my chin that looked a system of tributaries off the massive Mississippi River.  And age spots! Good lord, the age spots!

Then my horror doubled down as I thought, ‘Oh no, is this what everyone else is seeing?!”

I stood there for I don’t know how long, rooted in my horrific discovery.  I was pondering the scene in front of me, as if it were an accident in the road that you don’t want to look at, but yet you can’t turn away from it.

It was at that point that my old bff of a coping mechanism, Denial, kicked in.  I have found that Denial can come in handy at times, though my therapist would tell me otherwise.

I took off the reading glasses.  There.  Now isn’t that better already? I put the lip liner away, never to see the light of day again. 

As Denial and I became reacquainted though, I knew it couldn’t last.  I have had too much therapy.  I reached deep inside of myself and brought forth Reality, in all her Glory.  Or, in this case, in all her Wrinkled Glory. 

I took another look at myself in the mirror, with the readers on.  With the confidence of a Yoga Warrior Pose, I said to myself, “Eff it! Bring it on baby. You got this! Who gives an eff? Not me! Eff our societal pressure to look forever young!”

But Denial wasn’t quite ready to fully depart.  It’s like Reality and Denial made a covert deal with each other and found a mutual coexistence. 

That means, the lip liner stays tucked in the make-up bag and the reading glasses stay where they belong on my nightstand, next to my reading. 

I know what the Reality is, but no need to be masochistic about it, after all.  Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the least wrinkled of them all?