Runny Mascara Days

Do you ever have one of those days where you dangle your legs over the precipice of tears, but never actually take the leap? Where your eyes burn, but there's the next bottle to be made, or the next client to meet with, so you put on the Mask of Competence and keep on truckin'? So you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and walk away from the Precipice and promise yourself to give in to the emotional release later. When it's more convenient, the problems are all solved, and you've removed the makeup off your face and life.

I don't know about you, but my Precipice Moment never comes when I want it to. My tears want to flow when my mascara is fierce, when I'm about to go on stage to sing. When I'm late and sitting at a red light, or when the checkout person at the CVS is mean. 

So today, I thought I would give my Precipice some reverse psychology; I put my baby in his happy place - his jumparoo - and turned on the shower so that I could cry without startling him. But all I got was clean. So after checking on my little one placidly jumping, I decided to put on makeup even though I had no plans to leave the house. And I lacquered on the mascara. My tears love mascara! But then, nothing.

It was time to cuddle and change the little one before nap time. I thought, "I will have my Precipice moment when the little one is safely napping." So I scooped him up. And then gagged. Oh, the blowout was huge. All the way up the back. All over the clothes. Suddenly I'm feeling a lot less clean. And I discover that my tears apparently are attracted to blowouts. And it turns out that the baby isn't scarred by my tears.

I don't know if I have a moral to this story. There are times where I must push back tears to accomplish the next task - and discerning the right time is a marker of emotional maturity. But I'm realizing that many of those times where I have backed away from the Precipice may be times where it would have been healthier to leap.