I'll be living with this face for the next 50 years. How I invested in a 10-year-old complex and regained my sense of purpose and satisfaction at work.

"No one is looking at my face anyway."
"It's hidden by a mask, so I don't care."
"It bothers me when I take my mask off to eat, though..."

That's what I told myself, covering up the redness around my nose and chin for over 10 years.
There was a time when I used a full line of department store cosmetics and was enamored with the person in the mirror, but before I knew it, I was searching for "drugstore cosmetics, cost-performance" every single day. Since my children cost money, I put myself last. I forced myself to accept that cutting corners on myself was the "correct answer" for my 40s.

The 10-year void spent hiding in the lie that "no one is looking"

In truth, I felt sad every time I looked in the mirror.
The redness around my nose and under my chin had been there for 10 years if I traced back my memories.
On a day when my hay fever was bad and the redness worsened from blowing my nose, I laughed while talking to a business dinner partner:
"My mouth area is red like a panda's," I joked, but...
Seeing my bright red face in the mirror and thinking, "Will it be like this forever?" was the hardest moment of all, the moment I gave up on myself.

But I used busyness as an excuse to look away. Even if I touched reality for a moment in the bathroom mirror in the morning, I would immediately put a "lid" on it, both physically and mentally, with a mask and return to my life.

What woke me up was a casual remark from a male leader at work.

The prophecy of a beauty-conscious leader: "You'll be living with your face for the next 50 years."

That leader is older than me, but he is a "beauty-conscious guy" who never skips skincare and even goes for wrinkle treatments. He shared something his wife told him:

"You'll be living with this face of yours for the next 50 years."
"You can change your clothes, but you can't change your face, so you should take care of it."

50 years from now. I will be 94.
The moment I heard that number, an intense sense of urgency welled up. (Well, the leader can do it because he has money!) I thought to myself, but seeing a man with much better skin and higher awareness than me, I couldn't help but re-question myself: "Is it okay for me to stay like this?"

Recently, I had lost sight of why I was working and living. Every day was just being swallowed by the busyness of life without investing anything in myself. It felt like my very existence was slowly fading away.

The 130-item list that taught me the speed of "not putting myself last"

"It has to be now. If I don't save myself now, I never will."

The speed at which I acted the moment I thought that surprised even me.
One of my mottos is:
"Stress won't go away unless you strike at the root."
No matter how you deal with it, it will happen again unless you remove the root cause.
So, getting rid of it from the root is the fastest and most certain way!

If it bothers you after thinking about it a few times, you have no choice but to deal with it.
The next day, I booked a dermatology appointment and went in.
They said they didn't have the machine to remove the redness, so I researched again and went to a different clinic the day after.
I treated the complex I had ignored for 10 years as a "stress that must be resolved immediately" and put it at the top priority of my 130-item "bucket list."

I have always made it a habit to write down 100 (now 130!) things I want to do every year.
To ensure I don't get pushed to the back of the line by the daily grind, I force myself to make time to fantasize about an exciting future and cross things off one by one,
choosing to value myself.

The item "remove redness" was on that list. The moment I started working on it, the clock that had stopped began to tick again.

The meaning of work can come later. What I wanted was a "sense of satisfaction."

After the first treatment, when I looked in the mirror at my skin with the redness slightly faded, the "me" who had been neglected for 10 years was there.

Honestly, I don't have extra money even now. But I spent money and time on myself and did care that I was satisfied with. Just by that simple action, an overwhelming sense of satisfaction—"Ah, I am able to value myself"—returned.

Rather than thinking about difficult logic like "what am I working for," I first stopped putting myself last.
Even if I had absolutely no physical time for myself, I realized that **as long as I have a certain "sense of satisfaction" that I am valuing myself, my days strangely become this light.**

My goal is to graduate from the "chore" of covering up with foundation.
And in the future, when I am freed from work, I want to be a "super cool grandma" laughing with colorful hair.

So that the 94-year-old me can laugh and say, "I'm glad I didn't give up on myself back when I was 44."
Today, I will embrace the self that was about to fade away and live once more.

#ValueYourself #Dermatology #WorkingWomen #BucketList #40s #Lifestyle #SelfImprovement #VBeam