in less than one day...

A face-focused rant (that nobody should read except for me - but for some reason, I felt the need to write it) :

Not a fun day so far, although hopefully I can somehow manage to improve it. I woke up with uncomfortably puffy, swollen, itchy eyes (not the inside of my eyes; but the eyelids and the area underneath my eyes). It was probably caused by my eye cream, although I've been using the same eye cream for years, because it's been successful, but maybe they changed their ingredients or maybe my annoying skin suddenly developed a new allergic reaction or something.

When something unexpectedly unlikable happens, my mind has a tendency to feel like it's my fault and like I did something wrong and then after that, if it's anything body/skin related, I start worrying it might be the sign of a serious health issue.

Part of the reason for that is because I too frequently follow the accidental error system of looking up health-oriented stuff online and then I end up mentally inundated with seriously scary possibilities.

So I woke up with swollen, itchy eyes and then I ended up worrying that I had some form of Periorbital Edima (mainly because a guy's eye in an online photo seemed to resemble what's going on with my eyes), which has all kinds of different causes and effects, some of them not very serious, some of them very serious (allergies, skin disorders, kidney issues, heart issues, and something called periorbital cellulitus which is a serious skin condition caused by infection and inflammation of the eyelid and the skin around the eyes, which may require emergency treatment if symptoms last beyond two to three days).

But I think suddenly developing a serious health-oriented eye condition in less than one day seems to make even less sense than suddenly suffering from some serious eye irritation caused by an eye cream in less than one day, but what do I know? All I know is that I woke up with fucked up looking, uncomfortable feeling, inflamed eyes and I must have somehow brought it upon myself.

Puffy, swollen and uncomfortable eyelids and at the bottom of my eyes too - and it looks like there's water retention there and why? Due to an all natural eye cream I slathered on yesterday? I'm certainly not immune to under eye bags and wrinkles (which is why I use the eye cream), but this is more extreme. The bags look like little water retention balloons.

Part of me wants to buy a new eye cream, but what's the point? All natural facial care products tend to be expensive and lately nothing I use on my skin seems to have good results, so why spend 15 more bucks to fuck up my skin even more with another natural product?

If my eyes still look/feel like this this weekend, then I won't want to leave my house or do anything with anyone else. I'm upset because I feel like in the last few months, I've been trying to do a slightly better job than usual with my diet and my exercise, yet it's one annoying random side effect after another lately. Am I being punished for my past mistakes or is this a part of perimenopause or what? For several months, I had bloated stomach discomfort - then shortly after that finally got better, I had some random vaginal or urinary tract discomfort going on for a week - and today I wake up with swollen eyes and I feel like a bad person.

Also, today I received a poetry rejection less than one day after sending the submission and I'd blame that on my perimenopausal eyelids, except that three of the poems were collaborations, so...

Anyway, time for my apparently pointless exercise routine, then a shower, then making one of my apparently pointless smoothies, then trying to get some stuff done that doesn't involve looking at my own eye area, which is reminding me of nuts stuffed inside a squirrel mouth.