Too many eyelashes

“That’s too many eyelashes” I say quietly to myself, looking sadly down at my palm. No one hears me in my quiet house, no one witnesses my eyelash tragedy. It’s always been a habit in my darkest moments, subconsciously pulling lashes or brows out of my worried little face. My parents knew that as I grew up and then at 15, the knowing of me was handed over to him and now it’s 23 years later and I’m standing alone in my bathroom with no one to witness that too many lashes are in my hand and not on my eye where they belong. 

For the first time in my life, the small details, the relatively unimportant facts, the little pieces that make up a day, a week a month, my life…are…going unwitnessed. 

If an eyelash is pulled in a bathroom and no one is around to hear me worry about it, did it even fall? 

There is an element of this that is strangely liberating… all of a sudden I have small accidental secrets, tiny mysteries, strange little freedoms from the boundaries of ‘acceptable behaviour’. No one to notice if I ate anything but cheese today or if I’ve outrageously allowed myself a second diet coke. There is a privacy I’ve never had before and in my current rollercoaster of a life there is significant dignity to be found in that. But here I am talking to myself in the bathroom of an empty house and it is also confronting as hell. I feel untethered, somehow smaller and much less significant for my unwitnessed new life.

I suppose if you’re used to this freedom it feels less like empty space. I wonder if those who have thrived independently would feel suffocated by so much witnessing of their lives that someone could identify how many eyelashes they accidentally stress pulled? 

But for me, while I navigate a new phase of my life, one I never even considered, this unwitnessed existence has felt quite a lot like simple home brand loneliness. 

Until today. Today I think, surely someone cares that I’ve accidently pulled a handful of eyelashes out? Surely someone is going to be kind to me about it and tell me I should stop living on cheese and that diet coke will 100% be the thing that kills me.  

Because in truth, I am not alone. I have a friend and mentor who gives as many fucks about my career as me, a gaggle of women around me who know exactly how long I can last between dancefloor blow-outs, a family who actively love and care for my children, old and new friends who hold so much grace for my mistakes that I almost can too, a son who brings me tepid and concerning tea when I look sad and someone who loves me enough they don’t sleep until they know I’m home safe.

But also, I have me. In my freedom, in my loneliness I realise – I care how many eyelashes have left their post, I know cheddar is not a meal. I do not need someone else to witness me. Even alone. I am.

But I grab my phone and text my friend anyway, coz seriously… it’s a lot of lashes.