Love like lipstick

I have this idea that my life will be in order once I've perfected my lipstick. It's been 3 years since I started wearing colors that can be distinguished from the natural color of my lips, and I still haven't found the right fit.

I also tend toward fixation.

When I get an idea of something I want, I can't relax until I make it happen.

Lately, that fixation has been on a darker-than-burgundy-wine colored lipstick, in matte. I can't drive past a drugstore without checking, and the result has been 5 tubes of the exact same shade of red made by 5 different brands.

Tonight, I went to Target looking for Christmas pajamas, because I want a set to match my dog's, of course.

And as one does in Target, I found myself wandering through the home section and end caps, dog toys, and clearance dresses, until I found my way

to the lipstick.

A 16-hr matte gel caught my eye. I scrambled to smear a sample of each color on the outside of my hand until I ran out of space there and needed to try it on.

Did you know Target's makeup section doesn't have mirrors? All those bright lights and metallic tubes, and not one mirror for a glimpse of my darker-than-burgundy-wine lipstick fate.

I found a square of a mirror in the Pharmacy section, around the corner from the Metamucil and topping off the reading glasses display.

I held four tubes of lipstick in my hand, dabbed a glob on each finger, and dabbed each finger to my lips until I looked like a kid from a Bounty commercial that had eaten mouth-first from a jar of strawberry jelly.

What most people forget about Target is there is a handicapped one-seater bathroom next to the pharmacy, directly across from the Metamucil and reading glasses. Relieved at my knowledge from having to relieve myself so frequently, I ducked inside, feeling like in knowing this I had somehow beaten the system. I had a whole bathroom to myself. I would remove the lipstick mistrials and move on with my Target meandering.

I locked the door, grabbed at the paper towel that shot out from the automatic dispenser, and scrubbed furiously, discarding the towel once it had disintegrated on my face.

Somehow in removing the lipstick, I had spread it across my cheeks and the strawberry jam commercial that was my face was now an advertisement for Benadryl allergy. If you didn't know that 20 seconds before I was trying on 50 shades of red, you would have called 911 and administered an emergency tracheotomy because the only explanation for the color of my face was anaphylactic shock.

If I judged my life on the state of my lipstick, I'd say it was a wreck.

But that's what you get from a tube that says "16 hour wear"- an unconditional mess.

I waved my hand in front of the paper towel dispenser, and nothing happened.

I moved away from the sink and faced it, placing my feet shoulder width apart.

I rocked from side to side, waved up and down, tilted my head until it almost touched the floor, jumped, and still- nothing. It was empty.

Defeated and resorting to scrubbing my cheeks with a piece of soggy toilet paper, I took another look at my face and imagined what love looks like when it doesn't rub off.

It's "Tupelo" running through my head at 2am, and the goodnight texts an hour before midnight, after all these years.

It's the promise he forgot, but I'll always keep and the way the moonlight shines through the leaves when I pick my way through the dirt to my car.

It's knowing I couldn't wait on him to change and

he was another fairytale that didn't come true but

I couldn't look away after his December 3rd kiss because

I tied my heart and soul into the moon.

A love that doesn't wear off finds its way into my daydreams and the dirty dishes-

it cowers in the cracks in my tub

and scurries with the dust bunnies across the floor.

It's the thing I sweep away, once a month when I get the notion

and it's the thing I lose that comes back around unexpectedly

in another time, another place.

Taking one last look in the mirror, I unlatched the bathroom door, ready to brave my 16-hour-wear-red-faced walk of shame.

I didn't buy a single thing at Target today.

But I noticed

There is conditional and unconditional love,

And your love

Is not a love like lipstick.