"those who say a second is faster than a decade has not lived my life"

  I squandered my youth through my fear of being alone. It was a pressing fear, one that loomed over most of my choices as a young woman. I was afraid of being ugly. More specifically, I was afraid of being unwanted. What I need to tell you is this: I have made love to many men. I remember being a young woman and coming to that realization on a warm winter night. I had hosted a dinner party for a few friends and as they filed out, one by one, taking the comfort of company with them, as I slowly closed the door and locked the latch, I experienced a solid moment of utter loneliness, complete solitude. And suddenly everywhere I turned held a memory, an echo of something that had been, that was not anymore. I saw faces of past lovers in every space, heard their whispers and felt their kisses. My home was not mine any longer, it was theirs too, a shared space, and I wish it all meant something, that I thought more of myself, enough to want to take it all back. I have been touched, felt, caressed, and kissed, by many hands and many lips. But I feel nothing. There are those who wish they could store their emotions into tidy little jars and shelve them somewhere high. I wish I could take my jars and smash them on the floor, walk, run, and stomp on the broken glass until my feet bled so much that I felt something. Anything. 

   When I was a young girl my mother gave me a doll. It was a darling little thing, with a porcelain neck and face, skin the color of soft china. Her hair was a subtle gold, like the air of a young summer, and oh how I loved stroking it. I named her after myself and made her a dress out of the fabric from a dress I had once worn. My mother had given me the doll because work called her away and she thought I could use a companion in her absence. When my mother was gone I would sneak into her room and spread my mother's red lipstick across my little doll's 

lips, smear eyeshadow across her cheeks and give it a glittery glow. And one night my mother

came home early. She heated up some food she had brought me and asked me to come into her room when I was done eating. I couldn't eat a bite. I remember that feeling of guilt very distinctly. That I had done something wrong. I went into my mother's room that night filled with dread and said nothing as she sat me down on her chair, the one in front of her small mirror. She began applying rouge on my cheeks, lipstick the color of red candle wax on my lips. And I didn't ask her why she was doing it; she softly told me what each tube and brush was for. Then she used them on my face. This was heaven, I thought. And I still refer to that moment of understanding to define what heaven might be like. And I understood then that she must have known what I had been doing all that time, and her reaction to it was so much more beautiful than what my young concept of beauty could have imagined. The possibility of beauty became so real to me after that gesture - and I still hope that I will never cease to be surprised by beautiful gestures. I do dearly hope that I will always be surprised at how beautiful people can be, that my definition of beauty will always have room for growth.