The World Through Someone Else's Eyes

Last night I went out to dinner with a friend. We ended up at the mall because she wanted to pick up a new shirt rather than do laundry (as I’ve done that before, I cannot mock...) We ended up at some makeup counter, where I was promptly ambushed and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in the chair while my friend was demanding that makeup be placed on me.

Anyway, the makeup woman starts taking out stuff I’ve never seen before. I try to stop her. “I don’t do eye makeup.” My friend says, “yes, you are.” Now, my friends can attest to the fact that I don’t wear eye makeup. If I put on mascara, then I’ve gone overboard. My eyes get enough attention just being the size that the are; I don’t want makeup to make them look larger or in any way call more attention to them than they get on their own. And I hate people messing around near my eyes. (While I have contacts and can put them in myself, I can’t have anyone else near my eyes. My lack of depth perception really freaks me out when things are going on that close to my eyes, at least if it’s not me. It’s literally a panic where I can have problems breathing.) So you can imagine how comfortable I felt during this entire procedure. I kept asking my friend, “what did I do to make you hate me so much?”

Anyway, this woman clearly doesn’t care about my opinion, because the next thing I know, this woman has put concealer underneath my eyes (“you have dark shadows” - I wanted to snap, “yeah, they came from my dad. I like them.”) and white eyeshadow on my eyelid (your eyelid is darker than the rest of your skin). THEN, in a bit of logic that I just don’t get, she puts BROWN eyeshadow over the white eyeshadow to "give my lids some color." (So you *want* it to be darker -- please explain why the fuck you didn't just go with the friggin' natural darker color then??) Then she pulls out black eyeliner. (I have *never* had eyeliner on before and, quite truthfully, it scared the living shit out of me.) Then she piles on mascara (“you have extremely long eyelashes, did they ever get tangled when you were a child?” -- HUH??) The end result - there were NOT MY eyes staring back at me. These eyes were more foreign to me than my eyes were when I was 15 and had blue contacts. Or when I was 16 and had green contacts. These eyes were someone else’s eyes completely. It was so weird. It was like for a moment, I had no idea who I was anymore.

Then she tries selling me this junk that she put on. As if I’d EVER do that to my eyes myself, willfully...