Midnight

Eyebrows. Do you ever try to picture people without them? I am not entirely sure that eyebrows have a specific purpose or whatever, but without them I think that we would look really, really weird. Some people hate their eyebrows, and some people love them.

I am indifferent about mine, but they annoy the heck out of me because they get really, really long and curly and have a mind of their own. So every once in awhile I attempt to tame them, and it is never really pretty. I had them waxed for the first time at Christmas. It was all good until the next day when I got the strangest breakout right between my eyes because of the oily wax they used. Not cool. Other times I have gone on a tweezing frenzy and gotten a little carried away. Can you relate??

In my constant strive to be totally real and candid, I will tell you a story that will hopefully make you smile...

On Tuesday night my friends and I got together for our traditional Glee night, and as usual the conversation carried on long after the credits rolled. Somewhere around 10:30pm we got into talking about our eyebrows, and many a horror story was shared. I specifically remember thinking to myself, ‘Whew, I am sure glad my eyebrows are in tact!’.

Later that night we piled in the car and made it home around midnight. I walked into my humble abode and began preparing for bed. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I decided that it would be a good time to pay a little bit of attention to my eyebrows, since we had talked so much about them that night. I got out my little facial hair trimmer thing (electric, by the way), intending to just get rid of the wispy blond uni-brow. As the hairs started falling into my eyes, I casually wiped them away...with the hand holding the electric trimmer...

I shaved off my eyebrow.

I stared in horror at my hairless brow, while a million snipits of our conversation flashed through my head...snipits about how retarded we were back in the day when we went tweezer happy and ended up with lopsided, crazy, bare eyebrows. Only this wasn’t “back in the day”. It was simply “in the day”.

I set the alarm to wake me up half an hour early so I could have a shower. For almost 26 years my hair has been parting itself on the left, but I had to blow-dry it to part on the right so that I could use my bangs to cover the hairless brow. It didn’t work very well. Have you ever tried to change your part? It hurts. I never knew that. My bangs are stubborn and despite the blow-dryer, straightener, and moose, they kept falling back the other way.

So I tried filling in that eyebrow with the closest thing I had to an eyebrow pencil...

Eyeliner. Black eyeliner.

It didn’t work.

Finally I put on a cute headband, bobby-pinned my bangs into place and hoped for the best.

Now I have learned my lesson, and the moral of the story is, most people don’t mess with their eyebrows in the middle of the night, and definitely shouldn’t.

I also learned that a lot of people laugh at other peoples misfortune, and I don’t mind if you laugh at mine! So I shaved my eyebrow off. So what? If you can smile and laugh about it, so can I.

It will grow back, right? Right guys? Please tell me it will!

Oh and another lesson? I like my eyebrows and probably won’t mess with them again.

Ah, who am I kidding? I probably will...

: )

~C~

Consequences

I used to really, really fear God. And my parents. And my teachers. And my leaders. And it is because for most of my life, I did not understand the difference between consequences and punishment. Up until a few years ago, I thought they were the same thing. You do something wrong, you get punished. I was frequently grounded as a teenager for the usual kid stuff; the breaking curfew and having a bad attitude kind of thing, and I do believe that getting grounded is a punishment. However, getting charged interest on a credit card you never pay off is not exactly a punishment at that point; it becomes a consequence. For the last few years as I have dug a little deeper into my psyche, I have come to learn that I don’t like consequence OR punishment. And who can blame me? I bet you don’t either.

My housemate is a pretty neat girl. I am really, really blessed to have lived with her for the past 24 months. In all our time living together and being friends, we have only had one “fight”. And it wasn’t even a fight. It was her disagreeing with me. To make a long story short, I had made plans with my Lama for the following day, and my Lama kind of bailed. I am sure she had a good reason, like gardening or pressure washing or something, but I took it personally and was really bummed. Tanya had overheard my conversation and came into my room after and asked me what was wrong. When I told her Lama bailed on me, she reminded me that I had kind of bailed on someone that very night. That was pretty embarrassing. It opened this whole can of worms, and my housemate proceeded to remind me of all the times I start something and don’t finish or duck out of consequences. I was kind of mad at her, but the wheels started turning.

Later that week I was visiting a couple in my church who are very, very dear to me. They have walked me through some yucky things in life and know me quite well, so I asked them if what my housemate said about me is accurate. They said...yes.

I have come to learn that bulimics are often like this; we are experts at avoiding consequences and punishment. Here is a good example: We indulge ourselves, overeat, and soon after become fearful of becoming fat. Instead of accepting that, we throw up to avoid the weight-gain, therefore avoiding the consequence. And since we are also afraid of punishment, we hide our behavior from others. It is a horrible, unsettling, tricky cycle.

When I first started blogging I mentioned freedom a few times. I know this sounds weird, but it has been so wonderful learning how to accept consequences these past few months. Realizing that I can forgive myself for making mistakes instead of frantically trying to “undo” them is such a relief. I am not scared of cheese cake anymore. Or popcorn. This freedom has even followed me into the workplace, and if my boss asks to speaks to me, I am not scared anymore of getting fired. I have learned that making mistakes makes me human, and with certain choices comes consequence. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I am beginning to see that we cannot grow without being corrected sometimes, and I am just grateful that I have people in my life who care enough about me to help me break out of the cocoon I spent years building. I am learning to fly.

~C~