I didn’t think I’d ever find myself sitting on my lounge room floor in my 30s huffing whipped cream just to feel something, but that’s where it all started. I could harp on about how lockdown was hard for everyone, but this specific situation is something a very small section of people will get. This one goes out to the single women over the age of 30.
It had been a year since the pandemic began and the rise of Instagram selfies taught me one thing: My social capital ended at 25.
You see, when I was under 25 people wanted to date me. I came with baggage, but it was fine, it was the era of the manic pixie dream girl so if anything that just added to my charm. Over 25? Your baggage is no longer cute, and all the other single 25+ year olds don’t have any free hands to help carry it because they come with their own!
I gave up and used my social capital to yeet myself into the corporate world.
I have a pretty embarrassing disability, but it didn’t impact my intellectual skills and it helped me tick boxes. I was one of those girls in high school who was absolutely awful at social interaction, but I was smart enough to mirror others and average looking so people would let me get close enough to them to mirror them. Let’s just say, over a decade later, I was pretty good at masking. Poor choice of words in hindsight.
Over 25 is the golden age for corporate ladder climbing. You can be “The Youngest X” and that’s good press. Furthermore, it shows how the company is “Helping emerging young leaders” and all that crap.
Being a woman meant I originally got shoved in a customer-facing position (I won’t mention which bank, but let’s just say… They are Happy To Have You™ visit them). Being smart meant I went from pleb, to higher-paid pleb, to 2IC… and then, almost like that scene from The Office, they had a “women’s day brunch” with a bunch of women who must have the pain threshold of The Rock to be rocking stilletos for an entire work day.
I was quiet when they were discussing hobbies. It was kind of embarrassing to have a table of women doing cool hobbies like rock climbing, live-action role playing… One of them even helped her girlfriend make rings. Like… Dwarven smelting style rings. Here I am, like an absolute chud, following up all this cool shit with “Uh… Well my most recent project was finishing Rails for Zombies.” then having to explain that in my spare time I was learning programming languages no one even used.
… Well. I assumed no one used. I didn’t put 2 and 2 together than perhaps an institution that handled data would use… You know… A database oriented program language. At least, in some systems.
This lead to a pretty good trajectory. Getting taken from having to talk to people and wearing suits to taking an elevator DOWN in the mornings wearing graphic tees and jeans. It wasn’t quite the IT crowd but I was getting paid way more for just doing stuff I wanted to be doing anyway.
Turns out there are grants and all kinds of stuff for “women in tech”. It was great… Then I hit 30. Then I hit 31. Then the pandemic hit. Then I hit 32. I stopped getting promoted. I stopped having a passion for self-oriented learning. I guess I was no longer considered a “Young and emerging leader” at this bank.
It just gets to you. One day, watching yet another romcom on Netflix while ordering my groceries, I thought “Fuck it” and ordered 5 units of whipped cream. It was going directly into my mouth. I’d stopped caring and TV let me know that whipped cream applied directly to the mouth was the universal sign of forgotten, lonely women.
The delivery people were normally just… Normal. I finally got one that smelled like what I think I remember weed smelling like. As he passed me my one (1) unit of allowed toilet paper, followed by a bag with 5 canisters of whipped cream, he told me “You know, it’ll probably work out cheaper in the long run if you buy the maker from Bunnings and then the nitrous bulbs separate.”
“Oh,” I said, “I don’t do this often, I’m just bored.”
He kind of… chuckled? Not in a sexy way. This isn’t some kind of weird sexy story where everyone is smirking and winking at each other. I’ve read enough bad romance novels to know I’m stepping into that territory. My bad. Anyway, he said something like “Well, don’t get bored too often. The headaches mean you probably need a tolerance break for your neurons to come back.”
I just said “I’ll keep that in mind” and closed the door, put my shit away, then looked online to figure out what he meant. Holy shit. I realised that dude thought I was up to some freaky stuff… And then I thought… A few brain cells might be worth feeling something.
I won’t give directions but I will say that I began a process. Whipped cream can. Mouth. Next can. Whipped cream. Mouth. Stop. Then I waited as the world paused and it was like I was waiting for my existence to simply disappear with a bang. I get the start of the universe now. Do you know how many stars there are? How insignificant each person is in comparison to the vast expanse of the universe?
Maybe if I was wiser, I would have taken that wisdom granted to me by a flat can of cream.
I did not.
Now, the one thing you need to know, if somehow you’re not a 30+ year old woman but are still reading for some reason, is to know that even though everything in your life, from your instagram feed to every passing romcom, is yelling that the value of your facecard is dwindling by the second… You still try to keep up as best you can.
Me? I have had my hair bleached for so long I had to have extensions put in because I’m pretty sure by this stage the chemical burns caused hair thinning… That or the eating disorder. Whatever. Blondes have more fun… And get bought more drinks… And get told “Wow! I thought you were in your early 20s!” more often.
You already know how this goes. Covid means no hairdressers means DIY’ing everything. L2++ hair bleach is not kind to anyone. To cut a long story short, again, if you’re not a 30+ year old woman and are still here for some reason, Olaplex helps strengthen the bonds in your hair so you don’t look like that junked up doll Angelica from Rugrats used to carry around. It was a necessity.
After studying the lines carving themselves through my face like a punishment for every time I expressed joy, I worked my way past my wifi-signal-looking-forehead and up to my roots. Time for a top up.
So I get online, but of course, online beauty shopping is absolutely bloody ruthless at the moment. Everyone is doing their own hair. Everyone is getting into facemasks and skincare. Everyone is getting into DIY mani/pedi’s… Whatever. We were all self-embalming while we waited out the pandemic. Maybe I was just hoping to leave a pretty corpse.
After scouring Amazon and Sephora, finding “out-of-stock” notice over and over, I kept going deeper and deeper into the Google “Shopping” tab. Finally, I found something in stock. Probably because it was listed as “0llaplex” with a zero… and a double L. Whatever, I’ll take it.
I clicked to the website and it was like… I’ve never seen any Indiana Jones film but I’m going to assume it’s like a scene from when he found like… The gold, or the artefact, or whatever the hell he was after. Do you know how rare it was to find a beauty website where at least 70% of stuff wasn’t sold out?
First I got the bleach, shampoo, purple shampoo, conditioner, Olaplex… Sorry, “0llaplex”… And then I kept clicking the other tabs. Moisturiser. Lip balms. Eye creams… Then I found… Botox? Well, it actually said “Bo+0x” but I figured… How hard could it be to DIY? There’s YouTube videos for everything. I fixed my own sink last weekend.
Add to cart. Purchase. If worse came to worse it’d just wear off anyway, even if I make a mistake. I can just say I broke my webcam. It didn’t come with needles, but I had a bunch lying around anyway due to some other meds I have to self inject. They were being given out like candy as needle shortages started to hit and everyone was stockpiling at the start of the pandemic. I could spare one in the name of beauty.
The next 40-60 business days, according to the website’s shipping page, later, my parcel finally arrived. It must have been raining because it was somewhat damp. Possums, or cats, or something looked to have been interested in it at some point before I checked outside my door that day. Probably cats, since it had a weird ammonia smell. Everything was wrapped in plastic, but there was still that smell. Nothing was broken though. Whatever it was must have found the packing slip with the sender information absolutely delicious.
You know how in anime they have weird off-brand brand names like “Bepis” for Pepsi? Opening this package… Or rather, gingerly switching between cutting tape and peeling moist cardboard… Was like that. Perhaps that should have set off some alarm bells. In hindsight, maybe the grant funding stopped because the organisations realised I was a stupid bitch and not because I was 32.
I mean, not totally. I patch tested everything. Before using the Olaplex clone I rubbed some on my skin and beside a plastic-y smell, it was fine. No irritation or anything. Same with the purple shampoo, regular shampoo, and conditioner. Then the skincare. Nothing… Which is actually pretty lucky. Usually I have irritation to at least one thing in a large order.
Maybe that meant they weren’t going to actually be effective, but if you were in the same shoes as me during the pandemic, anything seemed better than nothing. Bare supermarket shelves. “Sold out” signs online. Limits on everything from pads to painkillers to Pringles.
To have a multi-step haircare routine again just made me feel human again.
Olaplex is weird though. You have to wet your hair, then work the Olaplex through, then awkwardly hang out in your bathroom for 10 - 20 minutes, then shampoo and condition. I gave my hair a light shampoo while wetting it, it had been a hot minute since my last proper “hair washing day” (if you know, you know). I worked through the Olaplex and then began reading the side of the Bo+0x box… Well, the box actually said “Botulism inspired beauty injection for additional bauty and niceness” but it was close enough. Who doesn’t want additional bauty and niceness?
It seemed simple enough and I’d watched any YouTube video that didn’t start with a disclaimer to not try self-injecting. It was funny how spoiled we were in 2019. All these beauty gurus saying things like “Experimenting can help you find your next magic tool, but always experiment with a professional!” as if a dermatologist could just reach through Zoom and fill me up with nerve paralysing agents.
I had time to kill so, wearing a towel as a dress, I walked around getting my supplies. The needles, clearing some space on my bathroom bench over the mirror, some fresh wipes, a pen, and the bottle of quite possibly my next miracle.
I smiled and used the pen to dot my wrinkles on the spaces where YouTube facial anatomy videos had shown me where the muscles ran through. Die risorius. Die frontalis. Die orbicularis, I always hated you the most. I continued to prick and inject, little by little, over and over into the spots marked by the pen all over my full face.
After 20 minutes I washed my hair as normal. When I finished my hair wash, my body wash, ignoring my hairy legs, and finally letting the mirror get rid of any excess steam, I wanted to see if I looked any younger yet. My heart sank… Nothing.
So I smiled again. I dotted again. I jibbed and jabbed with a new needle. Nothing.
The bottle was rather large and said one full facial injection should only require about 1/8th of it. I had used half. I felt a little woozy though so I lay down. I know you’re not meant to lay down for 4 hours after regular Botox but I just felt so tired.
I fell asleep almost immediately. I never got sleep paralysis but during that nap, I did. I won’t forget watching that thing slink in and out of my bathroom as I lay on my bed, but I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone. I don’t like sleeping anymore.
I don’t like being awake either. New line.
For the next four to five days I was in a bit of a haze. My sleep was disturbed with a paralysis that I actively wanted to avoid. Yet I was so tired. By the fifth day though, my skin looked… Kind of better than ever before. I logged into company calls with my camera. A few days after, HR started sending me through more “emerging leader” applications for grants, company paid virtual conferences for young women in tech… All that fun stuff. All the stuff they’d stopped sending.
It was at the 9 day mark I had to stop leaving my camera on though.
First, there were little bumps on the injection sites. Almost like blind pimples. They hurt a little bit and I thought maybe it was just an infection from touching them or something so I put some antiseptic cream on them and hoped they’d go down.
No luck, so I thought I’d try to dry them out. I didn’t have rubbing alcohol so I put vodka on a cotton pad and hoped that would do the trick. It… sorta did?
Perhaps they went away on their own.
By the time they were down, things had gotten worse anyway.
My eyelids were hard to hold open. They still are. When I close them my heart races and I’m scared I’ll fall back to sleep. When I have them open, I can barely see.
Funnily enough, my mouth is hard to keep closed. My bottom lip droops so. I’ve been trying to write this post up for almost two weeks to try and keep myself awake. I have to keep stopping as I have to keep removing the drool from my chin. The voice to text has been ok, but it is annoying to edit.
My skin has lost all elasticity. Sure, my forehead is smooth, but it is because gravity is just pulling all the skin from my face toward the floor. The veins in my neck have risen to the surface. My face is red now, full of inflamed vessels.
I thought about going to the hospital, but what would I even say? I was scared of ageing? I would have to dob myself in for importing probably illegal beauty products. They could probably make a psychiatric claim that I injured myself because no sane person wants a needle in their face… And what would I say to that?
“Actually, this is in my nature to injure myself when I really want something and is not a psychiatric break. I have a scar from when two girls in grade 8 said they’d be my friends if I cut their names into me because I was so desperate for friendship, then when I did it they told me they couldn’t be friends with a psycho.”
Yeah, that’d go down super well in the emergency room.
Whoever wrote Big Yellow Taxi was right. I didn’t know what I had until it was gone. My skin feels like an unwashed supermarket apple.
Mostly my kidneys just hurt.
I heard back from a scholarship for women in tech but they needed a video interview so I couldn’t take it. That and I’d been fired from my job because I kept falling asleep.
It keeps getting harder to breathe. I can’t even go in my bathroom anymore, I know he’s in there. When I’m asleep I just see his legs but when I’m awake and I need to use the bathroom I bring the knife with me and use it to switch on the light switch. The paint is scratched from when I missed but that just keeps the bastard in line. I know because he always hides by the time I’m in the bathroom. Because I don’t see him. But I know he is in there, because he’s [Translate-Me is unable to recognise speech pattern in this segment] I sleep. Sleep is not so scary anymore. I want to do it.
Sorry, I’m rambling.
I just mean to say, I guess at the end of the day, I’m posting this as a warning because I’d trade having a few wrinkles from the constantly dry mouth where the saliva can’t sit in it. I’d trade them for the glands under my tongue being crusted. From my lips being chapped. From my eyelids default position to half closed. To the burning of my eyes and the constriction of my veins. From the lack of sleep.
I’ve seen those posts. The ones that say “Life begins at 40” or “Life begins at 50” but I’m starting to think I’ll never know.
It’s getting harder to lift my arms.
My kidneys hurt.
Love your beauty. Please.
Enter. Enter. Post. No. You stupid program. Enter. Does voice to text [Translate-Me is unable to recognise speech pattern in this segment] Australian accents? Post.