Tuesday 17 February 2009

Battle of my alter ego's

I haven't had many thought pondering, non yarn posts for a bit,and so I thought I will stick one in before tomorrow's blatant plug for my wonderful trip to K1 in Scotland, lol, especially because I am in a thought pondering mood.

As I was trying out my new cleansing routine this morning, I happened to look upon my wealth of expensive dermalogica cleansers/toners/oils, and various moisturisers, doing a rough tot up of their cost, wincing because I need some new ones, and then looking at my skin and being thoroughly disapointed.

Strangely, my skin routine is something I stick to rigidly, I will never ever go to bed without washing my face or taking my makeup off because I can't sleep if I don't, probably the the fear of impending spots. I mean, I am 30 years old, and due to be 31 in six weeks, and I am still a mild acne sufferer, its got better, when I was married I had such bad acne I looked at the floor and never looked up when I spoke, I was horrendously ashamed of my skin, and actually sometimes when it flares up I still can be. I actually take photos of myself now, which is fab, and actually, I am a bit of a tart with photo's now, because  looked back in photo albums when I separated from Anth, and I have have only 10 of me from the last 10 years, and I felt sad about the fact that I hadn't documented that because I was so ashamed of my skin.

Yeah yeah I hear you saying, get on with the point.....so when I separated from chez husband, the skin immediately got 1000 times better, (no coincidences in this world huh?) but I still have had mild acne, and as a consequence I buy very expensive products and have very convoluted routines to solve it, and my skin looks absolutely haggard, I mean lots of you always know that I am giving up alcohol all the time (haha) and trying healthy diets, well its 99% in aid of my skin (thankfully my bottom is still in fine condition), healthy diets and reductions in alcohol help, but I just want to wake up like I did when I was 20 and have lovely smooth spot free skin, and not skin that I want to hide/scratch/rip to shreds cause it itches.

This is what I imagine, waking up in the morning, and putting on my pj's, walking down stairs and just having my rosy glow which I used to have, not to have to go through the routine and put makeup on to feel normal. All the women in my family have gorgeous skin, so why NOT ME!!!!!! Grrrrrrrr

My second point, - yes this is a long post today, is that I have a great desire to be natural, not to use evil cleaning things around my house (which I pretty much manage now, its easy, you just don't clean......(JOKE people) recycle, grow my own food, and one day I am going to build my own house, no really I am, made of wood and straw bales and lime mortar and stuff, but see I have this battle, the battle of alter ego's, (hmm, actually in the true psychological sense, I don't think its actually a battle of 'alter' ego's but I can't remember the correct terms, I think its my ego and my super ego, but anyway enough of the distraction) it a battle between the side of me that wants a gorgeous house, to wear Prada, have expensive makeup and jet around the world, and be absolutely glamourous, and the other side of me which wants to be a eco freak, living in my little eco house collecting mushrooms, with my hand dyed clothes.

Yay...the bit where the seemingly unrelated points of my whittling come together.....

So, it was weird, can't quite remember how I came upon it, but I came upon some of the threads on the internet on simple living, and found, I think its called the oil cleansing method (ocm), where you cleanse with olive oil and castor oil, now, before, that would have seemed like sacrilege to me, because putting oil on an oily face doesn't make sense, but part of my dermalogica routine has an oil cleanser and actually its amazing, just expensive and I ran out. The ocm also appeals because it uses only natural things. I thought, well, I have nothing to loose, my skin is a mess, I have eczema on my eyes, and spots so why the hell not? So I started last night, just with Olive oil, and my skin felt really really good this morning, no new spots, no evilness, and the redness around my eyes was reduced. So I am going to stick with it for a while and see what happens, but what occurred to me this morning, as I was partaking in the routing with a steamy flannel, is that maybe I can be glamorous and have an amazingly low carbon footprint, I mean, I always associate being eco with looking boring and dowdy, and that it means some kind of compromise, so then I decided what a fab challenge to be the most glamorous ethical/eco kind of person I possibly can, so that's what I am gonna do, and I am going to be acne free before my 31st birthday which, granted is 6 weeks, but I am gonna do it.

xxxx



3 comments:

  1. I was 40 and my skin still decided I was 15, and the only time I'd had clear skin was when I was pregnant - bit of a drastic way to get clear skin! After trying just about everything, including all that the GP could offer, I went to the hospital and they put me on Roaccutane. It's really vicious and has to be taken with great care, but basically it makes your skin grow up and stop behaving like you are still in puberty.
    My skin is now much dryer, about normal now I'd say, and hardly ever spotty, and I wonder why I never sought help earlier.
    Hope the new regime helps you.

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  2. I use Bio Oil all the time for moisturising...everywhere! But I'm very interested in making my own mixture up for cleansing so have just been investigating how much of castor and olive oil to use for my own individual mix. One website said to use Sunflower Seed oil rather than Olive as it has a more luxurious feel for massage. My sister has done a spot of aromatherapy on some course so I think I'll go nab her supplies and add something smelly to it too. I'll go have a rummage in my cupboard and see what oil I can find. As long as I don't use the stuff from the deep fat fryer. the one with crunchy bits in, I can't go wrong ;)
    Ooh it also said, don't be surprised if your skin suddenly gets oily for a few days, keep going with the routine once a day (night time) and it will return to normal.

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  3. I used to use OCM exclusively for a couple of years, as it was really popular on a forum that I used to be part of. OCM is THE best make-up remover though, and I often use oil to take off my eyemakeup. Gets it all gone in one sweep!

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