Farewell to My Beginner Self

Often when I put on my makeup in the morning I sit down with my toddler, and we do it "together." At first I could hand her an item to distract her, but over the last few months she has become increasingly more skilled at opening the different makeup items. I don't think anything is truly safe anymore from her curious fingers. And usually I catch her before a tragedy occurs. But not this time. Farewell, Maybelline Master Hi-Lighting Blush in Illuminata. It feels like the end of an era. I remember seeing it first mentioned on Nouveau Cheap's blog. I remember scouring my local CVS and Walgreens hoping to find it when it was released. I thought the crosshatch pattern on it was so beautiful. It was what always drew me to that line of blushes. This particular one though looked different, even more stunning. It was a limited edition drugstore blush that nobody talked about. Yet searching out a limited edition product made me feel like I was part of the beauty community even though I was a beginner. I never found it in the wild, but a few years later I bought it on Amazon. I was so excited to finally own it. I remember holding it for the first time and just being in awe at its beauty. This was at the peak of my makeup addiction. I was never the kind of person to not use a product because I didn't want to ruin it. But there was Illuminata. I swatched it carefully, trying not to mess up the pattern. Looking back it was silly how wary I was with Illuminata when I had another powder product with a pattern I also loved that I ended up fully panning. What made Illuminata so untouchable then? Still, after owning it for over three years I had barely used it. The only times I really did were when I "forced" myself to use it. It wasn't a color I would have bought now in the present. Honestly, the time it was first released would've been the best time for me to have gotten use out of it. It was the pinnacle of my highlight craze, where I thought I needed at least four different colors of highlighters, if only I could find the right pink and the right gold and so on. Illuminata would have been perfect to use once I realized that Becca's Rose Gold was too dark on me. But instead I waffled on the idea of buying it off Amazon for over a year, and by that time, it no longer fulfilled a "need" in my collection. Not that I had a different item at that point, just that I no longer actually wanted to use one on a daily, or even monthly, basis. Interestingly, the day that the toddler destroyed it I was using a eyeliner that I don't use too often. I'm always scared of using the Urban Decay eyeliner in Mainline because the color is so bright and totally against my style. But it's one of my aspirational products that I keep around because I want to be that person you know who wears a bright, fun eyeliner like blue. I think it's can be so interesting when styled in certain ways. That day I really liked the look that I was coming up with with the Mainline and the Petite Heat palette. I thought the blue and orange paired quite nicely together. I didn't realize that she had destroyed the Illuminata highlight until I was done with my makeup and we were putting everything away. I had a mix of feelings. I was disappointed in myself for not catching her earlier digging away at the compact with her thumb. But I was also sad that it was destroyed and had lost that beautiful pattern. Why though? Why did I care so much? I hadn't used it in ages, and it had miraculously survived through countless declutters. It was time to say goodbye. I just needed a reason.