Day 3 - the joy of make up

I had a lunch date in London yesterday, day 3 of this contentment challenge - very exciting and generous as I know the meal will be paid for - and so I have set about using it as a motivation to get myself spruced up.  The last two weeks have been something of a self-indulgent feast of wine, crisps and chocolate, thus undoing a lot of the work I have put in at the gym, and low fat, high protein diet I had been following.  

In addition, the weeks before the official split have been numb and difficult, and I have done minimal 'personal grooming'  I've been clean, but I stopped wearing make-up, and the moisturiser has not been going on the legs ready for the summer move to sandals and bare legs.  Once the split was explicit I went out and bought new underwear; pretty girly stuff to replace my sensible and now somewhat saggy Marks and Spencer cotton stuff that was due to go anyway.  A new start, I told myself, something for me.  But still I hadn't got round to being anything more than clean.  I remember when my marriage broke up that one of the things that got to me was being told the new woman had lovely skin.  I went into a furious regime of self-improvement, and found much to my surprise that I was the one that benefited.  I'm not sure my soon to be ex-husband actually really noticed, but I did.  The simple act of taking care of yourself is important, and quite a lot of fun.  Since those early days I have things I do that give me pleasure - a long hot bath with a mug of tea, a decent radio play and a concoction of bath oils that leaves me scented and soft, a selection of creams and oils for face and body, and make up. 

When I first started dating this last man, he was still in his own home alone, and from the start he left things at my place.  He brought a toothbrush with him on his first visit and there it stayed.  This was a change from other men I had dated, and so, with quiet pleasure, I realised I could leave things at his place.  One Friday night I appeared at his place without prior planning, an impetuous act he seemed delighted with, but I had brought nothing with me.  So the next morning I took myself off to Norwich, found my way to the park and ride and had my very first exploration of the city that is now my home.  I bought my ‘Norfolk Things’ clothes, creams and make up to be left at his place so I didn’t need to pack, I could just commute between the two places.  That sense of being and belonging so long absent in my life, was nurtured and grew, so that once he moved to the city away from his village home, my Norfolk Things came too.  They live in my cottage now and have been largely untouched in the last few weeks, symbols of a time when love was new, when I was looked upon I could see passion in the eyes that gazed on me.

And now I find myself numb and empty, unable to do anything but dull the pain.  I know time will heal the worst, but I need to help myself.  So I have used the lunch date as the focus for my rebuild.  Over the last few days I’ve dug out the moisturising socks, lain on the bed with eye pads, had that long hot bath with my mug of tea and taken time on myself.  And then yesterday I settled to putting on my make-up.  The smell and texture of the little pots and tubes were at once familiar and strange.  I found some clean brushes and put a few items in a bag for my handbag, which, predictably, were left untouched as I laughed through my lunch, catching up with news and gossip.  But it was the process of putting on those tints and colours that gave me contentment yesterday, I found I liked myself and the face that smiled at me in the mirror.