"I'm addicted to buying makeup"

From Cosmopolitan UK

It's 11.39pm and rather than getting the sleep my twitchy eye tells me I so desperately need, I'm scrolling through the Kylie Cosmetics website and adding her new Weather collection highlighter palette to my shopping bag, despite the fact I quite literally have an entire drawer filled with illuminating products already and only one pair of cheeks to apply them to. In fact I have so much makeup that Sephora could open their first store in Croydon and I could quite easily fulfil their entire stock requirement. A fact that I take zero pride in.

My makeup obsession began when I was 15 and first discovered Versace lip glosses in my local department store beauty hall. I would save up my weekly wages from my after school job mopping the local bakery floors (I'm 31, not 71 by the way) and buy a new colour every month. You see secondary school was a pretty miserable time for me, I was picked on for being fat and never found a group of people that I truly connected with. If you've ever been bullied I'm sure you can relate to that feeling of just wanting to blend in, that burning desire to be so completely and utterly ordinary that no horrible boy would ever pick your face out from a crowd and taunt you in front your peers. But as ridiculous as it sounds, my Versace lip gloss habit was the one thing that made me feel special. Each time I would tell myself 'this is the one', 'this is the colour that will change your life'.... Of course it never did.

Being a 'curvy girl' I could never fit into the clothes in the 'cool' shops and I was always more likely to be dragged round Etam by my Mum than Tammy Girl, but makeup never excluded me. So when I couldn't wear a replica of the pink dress Jennifer Lopez wears in Maid in Manhattan to my school prom. I could still have my own Cinderella moment by wearing her favourite blusher (NARS Orgasm), sans dancing with that guy who played Voldemort obviously.

As I got older and had more disposable income my obsession with new makeup only got worse and I discovered YouTube in the summer of 2009, after having my heart well and truly broken by my long term boyfriend. The combination of sitting in my bedroom for weekends at a time, utterly miserable, and that desperate desire for reinvention that comes hand in hand with heartbreak, lead to seek solace in the likes of effervescent personalities like Kandee Johnson. This new found addiction to makeup transformations helped me to develop an obsession with limited-edition MAC collections that also saw me open my first ever credit card (hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Back in the day MAC collections were a 'whole nother level'. I'm talking Hello Kitty, Barbie, Disney, even Wonder Woman and this was when brands like Glossier, Charlotte Tilbury and Kylie Cosmetics didn't exist. You know when people camp outside Apple stores for a new iPhone release and you wonder how and why their lives became so tragic? Well that was me when MAC's Venomous Villains Disney collection launched. I queued outside Selfridges on launch morning and bought pretty much the entire collection/as much as my bank account would allow me. If I had to visualise my makeup addiction, that early morning Oxford Street queue would definitely sum it up.

While my mid-twenties could best be described as periods of depression, peppered with multiple trips to the MAC store, things had started to pick up by the time I hit 27. I finally managed to get out of my mind-numbingly dull insurance job and landed a job at my dream brand, Cosmopolitan (more on that here). After starting out as PA to the Editor, my love of all things beauty finally paid off and I got my current role here as Digital Fashion & Beauty Writer.

You'd think that working in the beauty industry would have calmed my obsessive makeup buying habits would have changed, and to an extent you would be right. I'm lucky enough to get sent products to review as part of my job so I don't buy nearly as much as I used to. Having said that, I reckon I still buy one completely unnecessary makeup purchase every month, because when it comes to new beauty releases I clearly have about as much self restraint as Phil Mitchell in his local Wetherspoons.

Whether it's KKW Beauty's Contour Sticks, or Kylie's Christmas eyeshadow collection, or that ridiculously expensive Pat McGrath palette, I've learnt that my makeup purchases are very closely linked to my mood. As Psychotherapist, Samantha Carbon puts it: "For some the excessive buying of makeup can serve as a coping mechanism for other problems, like anxiety, stress, or depression." Don't hold back Sam.

Before I worked in the beauty industry, makeup shopping was like a form of therapy for me. If I felt sad I would roam the beauty hall aisles looking for something to give me a quick (but temporary) fix and fill that void as Samantha just reminded me. The problem is that now I don't have the same disposable income (as boring as the insurance world was, it paid very well) and working around beauty products all day means makeup shopping is kind of a busman's holiday for me. But still, old habits clearly die hard if my 11.39pm Kylie Cosmetics website visits are anything to go by.

So why when I know I don't need it, do I still want that highlighter palette? "The hope and illusion is this purchase will make you new and pretty. The rush of dopamine that you experience ahead of the purchase can give a feeling of euphoria and confuse you into thinking that the wanting of a 'limited edition' is an actual need." I should have known I could rely on a Psychotherapist to give me a harsh reality check. But does that mean I'm destined to spend the rest of my life paying custom fee charges to the Kardashian sisters? "The challenge for you is learning to identify your triggers in order to conquer the impulsive behaviours that frequently lead to unnecessary make up purchases."

I unashamedly love makeup. I love how it makes me feel, I love the therapeutic process of painting my face every morning and I love that I can do whatever the hell I like with the contents of my makeup bag. It's my form of self expression and my act of rebellion after all those shitty teenage years of just wanting to blend in. But after 15 years of compulsively buying makeup, I think it's finally time to accept the fact that no amount of eyeshadow will change the way I feel about myself.

I'm 31 now and although I still don't look like Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan, I'm not the same 15-year-old girl that would have given anything to be anyone but herself. It's funny what a good few years of self loathing can do, but I've reached a point where I actually quite like myself and don't think twice about turning up to work with zero makeup on. The problem is that old habits die hard and buying a KKW Beauty Contour Kit is still my initial reaction when I am having a moment of insecurity.

As long as Glossier exists I'm never going to stop buying makeup altogether, but I am going to put Samantha's advice into practice and be more conscious of my unnecessary makeup buys. Is that 11.39pm purchase really because I'm desperate to try the highlighter palette inspired by Stormi Webster, or is it because the guy who I thought was my future husband didn't text me back? Makeup is not the be all and end all, and as my drawer of highlighters only goes to prove, your future happiness does not hang in the balance if you miss out on that limited-edition lipstick.

Now if you can just all remind me of these words when you see me on the Kylie Cosmetics website again that would be great.

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