Another update from my life that nobody really asked for. But, you know, your girl is constantly absent. She tries to write. She tries to do so many things.
Luckily, after my hospital stay, which lasted, like, nine days and was a nightmare, things turned out pretty good. Or at least I thought they would turn out good, but that’s probably gonna be a story for another time.
But basically, I had a holiday with my parents.
Now you might be thinking, girl, you’re so lucky. And, well, I mean, we’ve always done these road trips where we travel from one country to another through a bunch of different countries. Two years ago, when we last had that trip, it was really fun. I loved it, and I was able to engage a lot.
But honestly, at the same time, I was also in a better place mentally. And it was just fun, you know, taking photos and pretending I was kind of like an Instagram influencer.
I was 25 and thriving, but this year I’m 27 and totally not thriving.
So honestly, I’m glad I went on the trip, but not for the reasons you think I am.
Okay, I honestly bought so much cute new makeup.
First of all, I got the Violette FR Bisou Balm. So popular. This Bonnie RRMZ girl from YouTube introduced me to this French makeup trend, and she was promoting the Bisou Balm, and I literally spent 36 euros getting it.
But I feel like it’s worth the money.
Okay, maybe not fully because the shade… I got, like, the most popular shade they had, and I don’t even remember the name anymore, but it’s not a perfect match. But it’s still cute, and the texture is very light.
Overall, I’ve been looking for a dupe for this Bisou Balm for a while. I can just tell you no one has made one yet.
Not Essence with their new collection, not Catrice with their Matte Blurry lipstick, whatever they have. Definitely not Max Factor, even though I’ve tried their products. Absolutely not Burt’s Bees, no matter how much I like them now.
Let me just tell you, there’s no dupe for that lipstick, okay?
Literally just… I can’t believe I’m encouraging people to spend so much money, especially in this economy, but just get the Bisou Balm, really. But make sure you find the shade that actually looks good on you.
I also got a bunch of other products.
You know how much I love drugstores, or maybe you don’t, but makeup drugstores are some of my favorite places because I just like to browse the makeup, I guess.
I got a Maybelline mascara. It’s that kind of mascara that was popular, like, ten years ago, if not fifteen, with the pink tube. Last year I got the non-waterproof one, but this time I got the waterproof version, and I’m so excited I got it.
I also ended up getting a product that I didn’t know we had in my country. So I did kind of get, I guess, ripped off a little bit, but not really because I think it’s now my new go-to product when I want to just apply something that looks good on my face.
I also learned that it doesn’t really work that well with one of my serums, which I should probably stop using, or maybe just use at night, because it enhances my facial scars even more.
In case you didn’t know, I actually have pitted facial scars, and I’ve been getting treatment for them since February this year. I only got, like, three sessions, but my scars improved so much.
I’m definitely getting treatments in October and November, and most likely in December as well so that I can finish the year with perfectly clear skin. Then hopefully next year I can finally start focusing more on my teeth and get aligners so that I can have a beautiful smile just like everyone else my age, pretty much.
Because your girl needs a glow-up desperately.
Anyway, I got this whole bunch of makeup. It was really cool.
I also got Burt’s Bees. Burt’s Bees! We don’t have that where I live, so it was so exciting for me to get it.
We also passed through Switzerland, which is where some people in my life live. I was really hoping we would visit them, but unfortunately we couldn’t because it wasn’t on the way to where we were going in France.
So yeah, that sucked.
But at least I saw Switzerland.
We had a picnic there, which was cool. I actually loved the fact that we had a picnic there.
We were mostly in the French-speaking part. We went to Montreux. We saw the Freddie Mercury Museum, which I’ll be writing about some other time. We also went to Vevey, where Charlie Chaplin lived with his family.
So yeah, it was pretty cool to see that.
But it also made me think about a lot of things.
I made connections with a lot of things, and this is something that my brain does sometimes. When I get information, I don’t always just process it and go, oh, okay. I mean, sometimes I kind of do, but other times I immediately see connections between a bunch of things. I’m reminded of things, and sometimes that’s just too much for me.
It’s triggering in a way.
So I enjoyed visiting the Queen Museum in Montreux, but I did not enjoy my stay in Vevey at all, if I have to be honest. And I don’t think I’ll ever return there.
I might make a post about it. We’ll see. I don’t know yet. I still need to edit photos from my trip, if I have to be honest, and there’s just a lot of things going on.
But yeah, another thing that I didn’t like about my trip this year was actually just my mom.
Yeah, I said it.
It’s weird. I know it sounds weird, but, well, yeah.
Honestly, the trip this year exhausted me.
I’ve also been trying to land a job, and I had to have two job interviews on the road, which was really awkward. It meant we had to stop somewhere where there was internet.
It wasn’t comfortable at all having a job interview at a gas station while we were also kind of suffering through Europe’s biggest heat wave.
Not fun at all.
We also had to wait at the border for, like, three hours, again in the biggest heat. My mom literally was freaking out, and she was like, “This is abuse, this is abuse.”
And she’s right, don’t get me wrong.
It’s just… I don’t know. It wasn’t fun.
Luckily, I had a book, so I finished The Virgin Suicides. And yeah, overall, I might watch the movie because I feel like I’ll like it better than the book. The book was a little boring, or maybe it’s because I’m not really the target audience.
But yeah.
I also felt like we constantly had to accommodate my mom’s needs because she has hot flashes. Although, to be fair, she’s, like, 69, so I have no idea if it counts as menopause anymore, but she has them basically all the time.
I felt like we couldn’t even stay at certain restaurants because she was like, “It’s too hot, I can’t sit here.”
And it was kind of like a battle for dominance, if that makes sense.
Something else also happened.
This is gonna be really hard to talk about, but basically I made a mistake when ordering her ice cream, and she freaked out in public.
I’m so lucky that we were in France and nobody really speaks the language we speak because it was really awkward. I constantly kept apologizing, but she made me feel super guilty for having made that mistake.
And this was also our last night in the town we had traveled so far to.
So that wasn’t fun at all.
The good thing is that immediately when this happened, I was like, how is it my fault? I didn’t mean for this to happen.
I didn’t blame myself. I just don’t see what there was to blame myself for.
I swear, I didn’t mean to actually do that, but oh well, it happened.
And I just feel like I barely saw anything from the towns and cities that we went to because we were constantly traveling.
We would leave at, like, 8 o’clock, maybe 9 or 10, and arrive at maybe 6 o’clock. There was so much instability and so much traveling that sometimes I didn’t even know where we were going. We would decide where to stay at the last minute.
And for me, someone who needed Wi-Fi so that I could write, that was stressful.
Obviously, everywhere we went had Wi-Fi, which was amazing. I also got to write in the car because I was using a hotspot from my phone.
But still, it’s not fun traveling and not really knowing where you’re going and barely seeing anything because you’re on the road all the damn time.
We literally went to so many places, and I feel like I barely saw them. I barely remember some of them at this point because we were constantly moving.
We’d end up at our hotel or whatever at, like, 6 or 7. Then we’d have dinner, go back, fall asleep, and the cycle would repeat.
And I just feel like it wasn’t fun.
This year, especially after my trip to Krakow, I think that’s something I really learned about myself.
I would rather go to one place, explore it for a few days, create a routine, have my time to write, not really stress, and just do my own thing.
I think I’m really starting to become more independent, and I think I like that.
I mean, I don’t know, but to be fair, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to fully go on the holiday.
I think I went partly because I knew we would go shopping.
I honestly got a lot of new clothes, plus all of this makeup, which made me excited. I also saw a bunch of cool new makeup brands, especially when we were in Austria.
But I kind of wish we could have maybe stopped in Milano because I would have loved to pass by Bath & Body. I love their hair conditioner that I bought in Krakow, but I have to order it online.
So yeah, that kind of sucks, but it’s fine.
But yeah, I learned some things about myself from this trip, I think.
And now I’m just waiting for my Paper Republic journal to arrive.
Let’s hope it arrives before the end of September.