Picking up the pieces.

When a boy broke my heart in college I remember my mum came and gave me big hugs whilst I cried myself to sleep.I was on summer holidays so I moped around feeling sorry for myself for a few days, talking to friends about what a knob he was and that there were plenty more fish and the sea and that he didn’t deserve me etc etc. 

15 years on and I’ve found it’s not exactly the same process.

I have to go to work each day and pretend to be fine. I have a daughter to look after, who I don’t want seeing me with tears running down my face or a sad face. I have a life to lead and luckily, in some ways, I have stuff to keep me busy so I don’t have time to dwell, but when the tears come it feels exactly the same. 

A boy has broken my heart. 

He hasn’t done it in the same way as any other. I don’t even think he meant to do it, but here I am sobbing with mascara down my face feeling like a 17 year old who still just wants a hug from her mum and for her to tell her everything will be ok. But really, being honest, deep down, I just want a hug from him telling me that everything will be ok. I even think he might need that type of hug too but we’re in a place where neither of us can communicate that to one another. 

New relationships, when you have to deal with real, grown up life around you, are much harder than the new relationships you have at 17. The worst you have to deal with is infidelity but what else should be expected from a hormonally challenged 19 year old boy I guess.  

When you’re 32 there’s baggage involved. There’s trust issues which you have waded through, there’s vulnerability issues but you let your guard down and there’s communication issues. There’s children who’d been introduced, there’s jobs to deal with, there’s family who were expecting to meet him, there’s friends you’d told everything about him, there’s history for both parties and it’s all bloody tricky to deal with. 

I understand this all, yet here I am with my heart broken at 32 and it feels absolutely no different to that heart break 15 years ago. 

Barefaced

I never thought of myself as a ‘make up’ person.  I just wear mascara because as a ginger/blond-ish person I generally look half asleep if I don’t. I wear some sort of base just so that my rosy cheeks don’t make me look like I’ve been on the wine all day (I promise I haven’t!) and so it covers some of the dark circles under my eyes, but that is usually it. I was also briefly an Avon rep but had to give it up as I was spending all/more of my earnings on the very same make up I was supposed to be selling, but I definitely wasn’t a ‘make-up’ person…or so I thought.

However, a couple of weeks ago, on a Friday night before going to the theatre with a friend, I lost my make-up bag.

 It was my own fault for a) trying to apply make-up whilst walking, b) having a small bag which was, as usual bursting at the seams and c) not being remotely aware of the world around me and, in my defence it was the end of a stressful week. I’d just finished work after a 9-hour day and I was knackered and somehow between the carpark and the restaurant I was meeting my friend at, I lost my make-up bag…with all my make up in it.

And I cried.

I’ll just go back to the bit about my stressful day and week for justification but that seemed like an overreaction to losing some make up, even to me!  But it wasn’t just some, it was all of it.

I’d lost my beloved Bare Minerals brush which made applying foundation or BB cream quick and easy, meaning I could do my make up in the 3 minutes from when I drove into the work carpark and when I actually exited the car to go into work. 

I’d lost my blusher which made me look a bit more alive on a cold day. 

I’d lost my bronzer which led me to believe (even for just a brief second) that I do actually tan when I go on holiday (I don’t).

I lost my eyeliner which I had just about got the hang of applying and made me look slightly more grown up and sophisticated – well I thought anyway and,

I had lost my Cath Kidston make-up bag which my brother and sister-in-law got me for my first birthday after splitting with my ex and when everything was, pretty much, falling down around my ears.

So I sat in the car and I cried…and then I realised I couldn’t fix my face because I had no make-up, so I cried a bit more.

So apparently I am a make-up person.

I also hadn’t realised how expensive the stuff is! Generally, you don’t buy your make up all in one go.  You slowly build a collection, working out what brands, colours, textures you like, spending time and effort culturing this collection that will help you face the day. £5 here, £7 there.  So having to walk into Superdrug on a Sunday and purchase everything in one go was a bit of an overwhelming situation for both myself and my wallet.  I forgot what skin tone I had, I forgot how some mascaras just irritate my contact lenses and I look like a panda by lunchtime. I forgot that, unless its fool proof, I’m going to fuck it up and unless its quick I’m not going to use it. But after what seemed like hours hovering over all the make-up stands (so much so the ‘security’ had started to loiter close to me) I put all the novelty items back. I gave up trying to fit everything in with the myriad of BOGOF, 2for1 and spend ‘£20 get a free contouring set’ deals and gathered together a selection of, what I think, are fool proof items to start my new collection, and do you know what?  I don’t think I’ve done too badly.