Sweat, Side Boob, and Self Awareness

If you ask me to describe myself with 5 words or less, I would not normally think to include “vain” in my list of adjectives. In fact, I think I lack vanity almost to a fault since the twins came along and I only floated further away from that description with each kid thereafter. It’s not because I don’t WANT to have a certain amount of vain-ness; I actually think it’s a nice quality to have in reasonable doses, and I envy (just a little bit) people who can pull it off effortlessly.  I see you in my social media newsfeed, and I think to myself, “God, you're gorgeous. I didn’t even take a shower today…” as I shake my can of dry shampoo pleading with the universe to let there be enough to cover me for just one more dirty-headed day and then I SWEAR I will wash this mop. There’s enough… butterflies… relief… YES! This is my day!

The truth is that I just don’t have enough bandwidth for the level of vanity that I desire, because other things fall in line in front of it. I realize I could reorganize my priorities and pull it closer to the front just like others do, but, I’m not that good; I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Sometimes I think about how I would never have left the house without looking presentable in my pre-kid days, and now entire weekend or vacation days can go by without me even having looked in the mirror until I pass by one later in the evening with a laundry basket in hand and sweaty hair sticking to my neck and, ohp, yep… those are sweat drops above my lip too. My poor husband and kids… the way they must picture me in their heads is not the way I picture myself, I’m quite sure of it. In my mind, I’m almost always me on my best days. To them, I’m probably most always the me I think of on my worst days… the sweaty one carrying laundry and maybe mindlessly displaying some side boob sneaking out of one of my favorite, hole-y t-shirts… You know, the me that would never open the front door for you. I’d be pushing my husband to the door and sneaking behind him to the bathroom to put on a bra (damn you, visitor! Don’t you text??).

Then today comes…

Once in a while, something happens in your day to remind you that you do still have some modicum of a quality you thought you didn’t you possessed any longer. Today, I was reminded that I am more vain that I realized. Today I had to leave the house with a cold sore the size of small planet on my face. And I cared BIGTIME.  I seem to get over people seeing my messy hair and yesterday’s mascara quite breezily, but having a sore next to my mouth makes me want to crawl into bed and not come out for 7-10 days. And God forbid I have to meet someone for the first time on a day when I have a cold sore, because I’m convinced that’s how they’ll always see me. “Oh, yeah, the Rendon boys’ mom? Yeah, I met her last year… tall, blonde, herpes on her face?  It was disgusting. I couldn’t even eat my lunch. Anyway, yeah, she’ll be here later (shivers abruptly).”

Let me tell you when you have reached a new level of self-awareness: it’s when you are behind a group of cars that slam on their brakes and a car behind you nearly rear ends you, and your first thought - YOUR LITERAL FIRST THOUGHT - is “Oh God, don’t let me die out here today with this thing on my face. What if I need CPR and no one wants to help me? What if I’m lying on the table in the morgue and everyone is talking about my disgusting fever blister and putting on an extra set of gloves, wincing as they touch me, or they’re calling in the interns, and when they arrive and ask which one, they point at me and say, “That one with the herpes simplex.”? What if they send in my loved ones one last time to visit with me before they take me off to the cremation facility and they can’t even soak in their love for me and wallow in their “I’m going to miss her so much” feelings because they can’t stop looking at this thing on my face? What if my mom takes FRICKEN PICTURES of me and sends them to everyone??!” SHIT!!! GET OUT OF MY WAY, EVERYONE!! This is NOT my day to DIE! And off to the shoulder I go. Safe and sound and a little less humiliated than I otherwise could have been.

So, yeah, vanity may not be in my top 5, but I’m guessing it’s at least #6 after all.

#sweat #sideboob #selfawareness #vanity

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