Do you ever make split second decisions and instantly regret them?
I have always loved the look of liquid eyeliner. There’s something so striking about dark, black liner; the definition it gives the eye, the way it draws out the color of the eyes. When I was younger I tried to master it, but could never quite get the hang of it.
My eyes are deep set, and I have heavy eyelids. Normal eyeliner is much easier, however it always smears, making it look like I drew strange almond crescent shapes onto my eyelids.
Liquid eyeliner doesn’t smear once it’s dried, especially if it’s waterproof.
I recently ordered some black liquid eyeliner from Ulta. I thought it would be fun to play around with and see if I’d like it. As I said, it has been years since I’ve tried it, and I always wanted to master it.
However, when I imagined this, I thought I would take my time on a Sunday afternoon trying to figure it out. I’d make sure it was a day I had no plans so if it went awry I could stay home.
For whatever reason though, this morning as I was getting ready for work and had about 10 minutes before I had to leave the house, I saw my new liquid eyeliner and had the now dreaded thought “how hard could it be?”. I had already put on my mascara, which to be honest, I haven’t even been wearing that most of the lockdown.
I confidently and excitedly grabbed that small tube of black, waterproof liquid, pulled my eyelid taut, and swiped it on. The first eye went…okay. It wasn’t terrible, the line could be straighter, but I didn’t have time to mess with that now, I needed it to dry. I fanned my face with my hand, with a mirror, with the medicine cabinet door. How long does this stuff take to dry anyways?! I have to do the other eye and get to work! When it seemed about half dry, I quickly did my other eye.
Friend, it did not go as well.
The line was much too thick, and I somehow dabbed the brush up from my lashline right into the middle of my eyelid. I quickly grabbed my face cloth and scrubbed my eyelid. It wasn’t budging, but it did manage to smear across the corner of my eye.
I do not have time for this. I have to go to work.
I decide to leave the weird line on my eyelid and pay attention to the corner of my eye. I manage to get most of it off my now red and irritated corner. I give myself one last look in the mirror and the right eye now looks amazing even with its wavy line, but the left eye, oh the left eye…
There’s nothing to do now but go to work and think of a joke to say right when I get there to let them all know I messed up but I’m still in good humor. I get in my car and pull down the visor to have one more look, and in all my hurry, I forgot to wait for the rest of the eyeliner to dry and it is now smeared and dried across my lower lash line. And not in a nice way either.
I drive the 20 minutes to work, rubbing my lower lash line the whole time hoping I’m not making it worse.
I get to work, and as I’m walking in I realize I didn’t think of a joke, and now on top of it all my eyes are red and puffy from all the rubbing and scrubbing I did trying to fix the problem.
I hurry to my work station and nobody says a thing. In fact, nobody says anything to me about it for over an hour. Finally I can’t take it anymore and say “Thank you all for not mentioning me deciding to try out liquid eyeliner today”.
Do you know what they said?
“Oh I think it looks so good!”
I am bewildered. I get right up close to one of my coworkers (we are both wearing face masks) and close my eyes and say “Does this look good to you?!”
Now she starts laughing She says if I didn’t close my eyes and get so close up she wouldn’t have even noticed the mess I made.
It was then I remembered a life lesson I had learned many years ago and generally think of in situations like this–nobody cares. We are all so absorbed in ourselves that we rarely notice the small flaws of each other. We all walk around worried and self conscious about things nobody else even sees.
This has always been so freeing to me in so many ways. It’ll do me good to remember this tomorrow when I try liquid eyeliner again.
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