Fall Reflection - Personal

 Hi all - no beauty posts this month. I’m honestly not excited about anything I got in my September boxes, and my Mega Drop Shop from BoxyCharm came today. It’s the 29th. It’s just not enough time.

The selections for IPSY weren’t great, my BoxyCharm had a couple okay things in it, and Kinder had another facial oil. I’m just feeling a little done.

I plan to pick back up for October and use all these Mega Drop Shop items as a secondary BoxyCharm post, so don’t worry. It’s just this month I couldn’t bring myself to get excited about anything besides my

                         PROMOTION!! At work!!!

I got promoted to Store Manager at my job! Several more dollars and a lot more stress and responsibility. I’ve been over the moon this week, and that’s what I was working so hard for and putting my time into. 

I really enjoy my job and have been hoping/waiting for a promotion since maybe six months in. I enjoy the work since it’s organizational, and I love my morning schedule and my weekends off. It gives me time with my boyfriend and time to keep the household looking okay, and overall it’s been rewarding and challenging. 

We’re having trouble finding more staff to replace me, since I’m replacing my manager and there will be a hole in our schedule. But I’m so excited because this will be me finding the people. 

I went in this morning to edit the generic job posting we put online into something more personal. I’m working on a weekly and monthly checklist for the SM, and I’m thrilled to have the chance to apply some of the ideas I’ve had to improve the store.

This is going to be the first actual SM title I’ve ever had, and I feel like it’s a stepping stone for me. Like, once you’re at this point in your job, you can turn it into something steady. There are ups and downs, but like, you can be an SM somewhere for years and years.

I also got offered a bonus structure where I make a certain percentage of the profit. So I really have the potential here to make a lot more money than before. Imagine if I can turn it into a business that makes 10k in profit a month - that’ll be another 1k in my paycheck. I’m tied to the store.

I love it. I’m going to work so hard. 

This September is the 10 year anniversary of my grave mistake, and I’ve spent a lot of it in a blue mood. I thought I’d talk a little bit about the person I was when I was sixteen, in 2012, a decade ago. People said the world was supposed to end that year, and maybe for some people, it did.

    Danielle was such a sweet girl. She spent so much of her day listening out for music she recognized and keeping an eye on the shop windows as she walked by to see if she looked pretty. She just wanted to feel pretty.

She brought coffee to school even though she wasn’t supposed to, because that makes no sense. She had okay grades, which she didn’t have to work hard to maintain. She didn’t have any friends and wasn’t particularly interested in them, but she was obsessed with boys. She wanted boys to like her so badly. That was the only thing she cared about.

She was a little bigger and knew it. She really wished she was skinny and pretty, but she wasn’t allowed to wear hot clothes or makeup because she grew up in a strict household. She did not think she was attractive at all. She looked in the mirror and felt sad.

She had a job after school and liked it so much. People looked at her and said thank you and seemed to appreciate her there. She had a radio in her room and sometimes turned it to stations that her dad didn’t want her to listen to. She knew nothing about men or sex or relationships or the way the world was. She was so unmarked. So smooth and un-etched.

 She didn’t have her own computer, so she spent time after work reading or studying or watching tv in the living room or knitting or eating. Lots of eating.

She lived with her dad and grandparents but also spent time with her mom who lived up the street. She wasn’t close with her little sister and was relieved that they were living at separate houses. She had a lot of strife with her dad. He just wouldn’t let her experience any of the things her peers were getting to experience.

She stole from her job and brought candy home to eat under the covers every night. She wondered what the girls saw in the popular boys and why the popular boys didn’t see anything in her. She had a hard time developing a crush on someone that would make sense. It was always someone on the edges.

She didn’t know much about grooming, so she had everything she would have needed to be beautiful and attract attention except the wherewithall. 

She wasn’t allowed to spend the money she made at work, but she tried to all the time. She didn’t make much, but that was okay. She was doing something productive. Danielle was industrious. Wanted to be building something.

She knew a few tunes self-taught on the piano and had such a beautiful voice. She loved the sound of her own voice. She sang in the shower back then.

Danielle was so sad. She didn’t feel loved by her family and she barely knew it. She had no soul and no depth and no sense of reality, and she barely knew it. She went and spent time with family who drained her, and her daddy issues were only getting worse than they were when she was thirteen. 

She saw someone out of the corner of her eye. Someone with time in their face. With edges and creases and strings hanging off and motion. Spiraling motion. Spiraling away from her. Moving fast, going somewhere else.

She grabbed on. 

She would cry a lot more now, although she did always cry a lot. 

A few years later I had an awful apartment, a toxic marriage and darkness. A king size mattress. A few jobs here and there. A lot of screaming. A lot of asking why. A lot of stairs to climb. A lot of compromises to make. Chicken fried rice. Dishes. Laundry. Tears.

Blackout curtains. Long walks. Sunrises. Headphones. Sex when I could get it. A long list of complaints. A long list of grievances. Secrets. Screenshots. Panic attacks. Public transportation.

I was married to a short fuze and a long history. I was learning how not to speak and how not to breathe and how not to leave. How to just hand over the bits of myself that I needed to keep the peace. How to let beautiful moments be tainted. How to let go of my dreams and my potential. How to feel like the victim. How to let that fill me and give me righteous anger. 

Then he taught me how to be mean. I turned cruel. Sarcastic. Degrading. I started telling him what I thought of him. I started telling him the truth. The cruel truth.

I pretended to be a little dumber. Pretended to be a little worse of a person. A little more pathetic. I apologized after he yelled at me for making him yell. I apologized for asking him to stop. That was wrong of me. Can we be friends again. I’m sorry for saying I am unhappy. I’m sorry I bled all over you. I won’t do it again.

I am twenty-six and I cry just as much as I used to but it’s very different now. I’ll look up and see a leaf on a tree in the mist and something just takes me. To be living, after feeling like death. To be breathing after feeling underwater. I’m so full of life and gratitude. I have a nice apartment in a beautiful little town. I have a cute little car and a full-time job. I have a matching set of coffee mugs and a day for each one. A bag full of laundry quarters. Five squishmallows I sleep with. My own T.V in the living room. A vanity. 

A sexy man napping in the other room. Date nights. Sunsets. Videogames and loud, raunchy music. All the makeup I could want. Long hair. A beauty routine. Expensive coffee. Warm hands. Taylor Swift’s last few albums. An excellent, healthy relationship with my sister.

Conversations. Fights. Cooking together. Dishes. Laundry. Hope. Orgasms. A warm winter jacket and a pair of gloves his mother bought me. Daddy issues.

I turned out to be so beautiful. I love looking in the mirror. I can’t get enough of me. I’m such a huge fan.

I watch car crash videos to relax and write. I buy cookies from a small bakery business that comes around to the market every few weeks. They’re so much money but I love them. 

I have honesty and trust and freedom. This is so much better. 

Ten years ago I couldn’t have imagined this life for me. I am miles ahead of what I thought was possible. Danielle would be so proud of me.