Some links here are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Glow In My Own Way may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what I write. More on that.
I had already decided I didn’t want to go. I knew this the way you know something is going to rain before you check any forecast, just a low certainty sitting in my chest all day. It was a friend’s birthday, a gathering at a bar I’d never been to, a group that would include people I like fine but don’t know well enough to relax around. By six in the evening I had run through every possible excuse and rejected each one as too flimsy, and so I accepted that I was going, and turned to the mirror to get ready.
What happened next surprised me a little, even though it’s happened before. I did not get ready quickly or halfheartedly. I sat down and gave myself forty minutes, longer than I’d give a party I was actually excited about. I want to try to understand why, because in the moment it didn’t feel like a choice I was making consciously.
The mirror as a kind of rehearsal
I think what I was doing, without naming it at the time, was building a version of myself that could handle the room I didn’t want to walk into. Each step of the routine felt less like decoration and more like armor going on in stages. The foundation first, evening out a face that felt too exposed as it was. Then the eyes, more definition than I usually wear, because I think I wanted to look like someone who had a reason to be there, someone who belonged in the noise of a crowded bar rather than someone who would rather be home.
I kept catching myself in the mirror mid routine and thinking, you don’t have to do this much. And then doing more anyway. There’s a specific tension in that, knowing a thing is more than necessary and doing it regardless because the doing itself is serving some other purpose you can feel but can’t quite name.
What I was actually rehearsing for
I think I was rehearsing for the version of the evening where someone asks how I’m doing and I have to answer in a way that doesn’t invite follow up questions. Fine, busy, good, you? The kind of exchange that requires a face that reads as composed even if nothing underneath it is. Every stroke of the brush felt like it was contributing to that face, the one that could stand near the bar holding a drink and nodding along to a conversation about someone else’s job change without giving away that I would rather be anywhere else.
I don’t think this is dishonest, exactly, though I’ve wondered if it is. I think it’s closer to what people do when they iron a shirt for a meeting they’re dreading. The shirt doesn’t change the meeting. It changes something about how you walk into the room.
By the time I finished, my face looked like it belonged to someone who wanted to be at that party. I remember standing in front of the mirror and feeling like I had built a version of myself I could send out on my behalf.
How the night actually went
I went. I stood near the edge of the group for the first twenty minutes, the way I always do, waiting to find the one person I could actually talk to without performing. I found her eventually, a coworker of my friend’s who I’d met once before, and the two of us ended up in a corner talking about something unrelated to the party, some show she was watching, and for a stretch of maybe half an hour I forgot I hadn’t wanted to come.
I don’t think that shift happened because of the makeup. I want to be honest about that. The eyeliner didn’t make the conversation good, the conversation was good because she happened to be someone easy to talk to. But I do think the ready face gave me the twenty minutes of standing at the edge without feeling like I was visibly falling apart while I waited for something to click. It bought me time to look composed while I wasn’t yet.
The moment I checked the mirror in the bathroom
Around ten I went to the bathroom and checked my face in the mirror there, the way I always do at some point in an evening I’m not fully present for. The eyeliner had smudged slightly at the corner, the kind of small imperfection that happens over a few hours. I fixed it with my finger, not thinking much, and looked at myself for a second longer than I needed to.
I remember thinking, you look like you’re having an okay time. And some part of me wanted to argue with that, wanted to say no, I’m not, this isn’t really me. But another part of me thought, maybe the face isn’t lying. Maybe by that point in the night I actually was having an okay time, and the forty minutes at the mirror earlier had done something more than cosmetic. It had gotten me into a room I wouldn’t have walked into as myself, but I ended up finding a version of myself in there anyway.
What I think this is, tentatively
I don’t fully trust the conclusion I’m about to write, but here it is. I think getting ready elaborately for something I dreaded wasn’t about tricking anyone else. It was about giving myself something to hold onto while I walked toward an evening I hadn’t chosen with any enthusiasm. The routine was a kind of scaffolding, not permanent, not even necessary in the end, but useful for the first twenty minutes when I needed somewhere to stand while the actual evening figured out what it was going to be.
I still don’t know if I’ll do the same thing next time. Maybe next time the honest response to dreading an event will be to skip the eyeliner entirely and walk in looking as unsure as I feel. I don’t think there’s a rule here. I just know that on that particular Tuesday, forty minutes at the mirror got me out the door, and that was apparently what I needed, even if I couldn’t have explained it to myself at the time.
