Bad Habit

The beginning

Lilly is staring at the non-chromatic circle on the ground. A chromatic circle is full of different colors who are opposite to each others, complementary. Her circle is a bunch of nudes, pinks, reds, purples and all of the other colors in between. Every single one of her lipstick, liquid or not, matte, glossy or creamy, next to each other, reunited in a pretty circle. No need to wonder why she needed that much space.

She could count them all, but... is it really a good idea? Her 6 organisers are full. The 24 places in each organiser are full. That makes 144 lipsticks already. Plus the few ones randomly moving in the drawer since there is no more space left in the organisers. Plus the ones she moved into a bag so her mum wouldn't freak out too much if she ever opened the drawer full of lipsticks. At least, Lilly doesn't have the same shade twice, except for the Kat Von D's nude. If was from two different stores. Except also for the ELF's gloss. She received one for free in a little kit she got and she bought the second on the website, on purpose. She didn't remember the free one. And there's ELF's lip lacquer in shade Tea Rose that she owns twice, but it was on purpose for both. This shade is out of stock a lot on the website, hard to get, and she fell in love with this soft purple so... just in case she needs it. But besides, there's no single identical shade. Every colour from every brand is different. She knows. She sees it.

How could she let herself go like that? How could she let herself buy that much? Oh, yeah, it's her way of... too many things. Got a good grade? Treat yourself with a lipstick! Got a bad day? Buy a lipstick to make you feel better! Got a new job? Treat yourself, girl! Feeling nervous, stressed, scared? Buy a lip gloss, at least you'll shine bright like a diamond. She used to do the same with food; with chocolate and sweets, mostly. Until she realised that this is a bad habit for her health (and for her weight mostly). She turned to another way to deal with her emotions. She's now a compulsive buyer. A real addict. But why?

Before it all started (her addiction), she reached for help – she was forced to. She ended up in a shrink's office once in high school. For a French's homework, the class had to write a slam about a subject they were interested into. Lily went away from the pretty blue sky and the nice flowers, she went for something darker: suicide. Bullying and suicide. She never really experienced it, not to the point of committing it, but still. She was a creative mind, so it was easy for her. When she read her composition in front of her classmates... everybody was shook. Her teacher was worried about her mental health, so she sent her to the psychologist.

The conversation seemed pretty random and colloquial. School, courses, family, likes and dislikes, etc. After one hour of talking, the final verdict: Lily was scared of the future. Afraid of the unknown, of changes. Wow. Congrats, Sherlock! So many years of university for that? Lily could've said it easily even without a psychology degree.

A year later, she started to buy makeup and use it. She liked colors, so she applied some to her face. She felt powerful when she had makeup on, like an invincible mask that could give her strength, and power, and confidence. Things kept escalating through the years until... until now. Until the 22 years-old young adult can not control herself from buying a pretty lipstick or a pretty lip gloss she sees.

"Yeah, I'll stop now," she has told her mum a hundred times already. But she never stops.