My Eyeliner Determines My Day

There is a wisdom that some people share about setting the tone of your day. That it’s important to create good vibes when you get up so that you can ride those vibes all the way until bedtime.

And then there are some people –like me- who judge the tone of their day by how it starts off. If you spill your coffee, slop your cereal, and/or have to change your clothes due to unfortunate circumstances, all the good vibes you can muster aren’t going to clear away all of those clouds.

For me, my eyeliner determines the kind of day I can expect.

Back in the long, long ago of my high school years and just beyond into my twenties, on the occasions I wore eyeliner, I only wore it on my lower lids. I simply could not work an eyeliner pencil on my top lids for love or money, so I never bothered with it. As my make-up look evolved, I actually stopped wearing eyeliner for the most part in my late twenties and into my thirties.

And then I decided to go as Batgirl’s mild-mannered librarian alter ego Barbara Gordon for Halloween.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ’60s Batman show, or the ’60s in general, but the make-up look at the time involved winged eyeliner. And because I am dedicated to my Halloween costumes, I was determined to learn how to work it. Thanks to YouTube tutorials and the advancement in eyeliner technology that led to the development of liquid liner pens, I was able to nail the look.

And I just kept on wearing eyeliner.

I decided that I liked it. It was fun. And with some practice, I cut down the time it took me to apply it from ten minutes to something more reasonable. Usually less than five. I do a basic winged look, but it varies from day-to-day because despite the nearly daily practice, I’m still not exactly consistent with my skills.

This is why eyeliner has become the barometer of my life.

The difficulty I have getting my eyeliner on typically predicts the difficulty level of my day. The days in which my eyeliner goes on smooth and clean and my right eye looks similar to my left eye are certain to be easy days. They are few and far between.

Most days, I must deploy a Q-tip to clean things up. It’s usually just a matter of fixing the wings or thinning out the lid lines because they went from sleek to Goth in a couple of strokes or doing a little extra work to make sure my eyes at least sort of match. I consider this to be an average difficulty day. Things will go mostly smoothly, but I’ll have a couple of hitches in the ol’ giddyup.

And then there are the multiple-Q-Tip, Judas-Priest, I’m-calling-in-because-I-can’t-get-my-eyeliner-to-work days.

These are the days that I just automatically write off. Nothing good will come of them and if anything does, I won’t read too much into it. These are the days that I leave the house knowing I’m going to be fighting for my life my entire shift at the library. And probably on the way there and home, too. Everything is going to aggravate me and be harder than necessary.

I write off those days and hope for better eyeliner tomorrow.

I admit that there are exceptions to the rule. There are days when my eyeliner goes on perfectly and it turns out to be the only easy part of my day. Likewise, there are days in which I can’t get my eyeliner to go on right if everybody’s lives depended on it and then end up coasting until bedtime.

After all, nothing in life is absolute.

Especially eyeliner.