#y2k bath and body works holiday

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Bath and Body Works Snow Glow Frosted Shimmer Bath and Shower Gel

Holiday 1999-2001ish

Found on Ebay, user funfindsforyou

[nocautionarymind]

I was born with a fast metabolism, or more likely,

developed one over time, eventually burning hotter than it should. Like my heart. Sometimes I can feel it doing things, my heart. It’s fractured. Not suddenly, like glass breaks, but like the fault line that comes from wearing a piece of jewelry or leather jacket too many times, straining its wholeness through repeated use.

Christmas trees have been on the street in New York since New Year’s. I walk by a whole lot of them, piled up in the corner of McGolrick Park. I smell evergreen on the wind, walking where fugitive needles have shed on the sidewalk. When it rains, the air perfumed with pine reminds me of fresh cut grass.

Many times he told me he loves the way I smell. One time, he told me I was like a light fruit, honeydew, one that you could eat all day and not get tired of. I loved how the imprint from the particles of my body were latched into the creases of his memory, triggering a primal response, like water quenches thirst, and cold is satisfied by warmth or heat by chill, a longing that comes from far below. The reason that he hurt me, because it came from so far below.

Women at the doctor’s office compliment my skinniness, though I desire to look full and healthy, womanly. What does that mean, looking like a woman? Where is it within me and how do I extricate it? I am 29 next month.

I think of my grandmother. Her prism hangs by my window so I am reminded of her often. She was on my mind when I woke on New Year’s Eve to celebratory sounds on the street, and fireworks. She babysat my sister and I the year of Y2K. I fell asleep and she didn’t wake me when time struck midnight. I was furious. When I started my period for the first time, a couple years later, she hugged me on the stairway on the second level of her Mt. Dora house in Florida. She was excited to welcome me into womanhood. Her memory is my beacon now. 

I feel my mind exercising, trying to understand a buddhist thought: we all stem from the same creative force, a nonbeing, a vastness, an emptiness. That we are all light bulbs, not the filament or glass itself, but the light from the lamp that emanates and becomes one light with all other bulbs’ light to make ONE light. That we are not our bodies. Our bodies are the vehicle for something else. We must take care of, listen to, and moderate our bodies. We must respect them, our ultimate task supposedly to connect with with our mind, our higher potential.

I read recently somewhere the hardest thing for us to do as humans is to celebrate the other. 

I think It’s funny how we teach children to avoid being human, to resist our nature. Or is it just the duplicitous nature of existing itself? - That our biggest challenge as sentient creatures is to resist our nature. Sometimes I wonder which is it - that we should follow our instincts or discipline ourselves? Our ego? Are sex and food gifts, reasons to be here in the first place, or distractions from true fulfillment and freedom?

Female energy is yin. It is dense, cold, inward, below, still - like the earth; male energy is air, hot, outward, above, and moving, like the sky. According to this traditional belief, the relationship of these foils is present in all things. The tip of the hair is yin to its root. The head is yang to a body’s feet. Supposedly during sex, a male’s sexual energy is emitted through the penis into the woman, up into her heart, flowing out through her breasts, and back into the man.

I fell in love with a man who needed things that weren’t inside of me. And if they were, then they were underneath something that he couldn’t lift, something that he put there to begin with, like a seed that grew. Sometimes when I think of him, parts of me contract, the flow of blood from my heart to my other organs quickens. That is how intricately ingrained he is in my mind, though I am forgetting the way he tastes exactly. 

You can love a man and he can not love you back. 

A fast metabolism keeps me hungry most of the time.

I took a hot bath and smoked a joint in the candlelight. Sitting in the warm water, I ran the faucet cold, and washed my face with it, my feet and hands. I stuck my head under it, and the water’s chill was satisfying like my lover’s caress or a gust of wind. It reminded me of the sensation in my arm when the nurse intravenously gave me fluids in the ER after getting sick on gastritis and Christmas wine last month. It felt like a clean, renewing brightness, a zip, a thrill.

Satisfaction runs deep, at the level of your blood, in the cells. It can take precedence over other things, like sanity. 

My metabolism races.

Pharmacies expel pink and red for the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, and I brace myself in the fluorescent glow. Christmas trees aren’t even off the road yet...

Being sold and told to is tiring.

The radiator in my apartment building is loud. It clangs and clacks around and puts out heat like a sauna. Sometimes we have to open all the windows in order to breathe. I’m fairly sure this is my last winter in New York.

During the summer, we kept the windows open. When my roommate was at work, and I was caught in a tantrum of tears over a man who struggled to end a relationship with me that he didn’t want, couldn’t manage, or at least kept himself from, and therefore from me, as well, I would lay on the sofa and look out the window, nothing visible but the top of the building across the street and an expanse of sky. In these moments of solitude, I would become hyper aware of the sound of shopping carts, when passing by, wheels rolling along the cement sidewalks three floors down, jingling empty glass bottles in big, clear plastic bags, that the homeless collected to recycle for cash. The sound of this chorus seemed strangely in conversation with my heart, the only sound around just as loud as my own sobbing, echoing back in that quiet corner of Greenpoint by the BQE.

At the end of the month, my dad sends me a text message, “Are you ready for the arctic chill?” That’s what they’re calling it on the news, not that I would know since I hide from the world whenever given the chance, but he would, since his job is to tell the news. The phrase makes my scattered brain think of Arctic Char and I imagine the white rivulets of fat in between firm, but impressionable pink slabs of fish flesh. 

After one sunny morning, forceful white sheets of snow rushed in from the west, falling from the rooftops, twisted and twirled by the wind in fits and curls, like smoke. A manic wind howled at the window, even after the snow stopped just a few minutes after its assault, already melting in the streets.

At 6:30 the next morning, there are no cabs, but there are 4 degrees outside. I rush out the house for work, with no gloves. I almost cry. Maybe I cry just a little. Not about him but, yes, because of him. Because I forgot my gloves. Because I am worn down. Lifting is heavy. 

I have a fast metabolism. 

In a documentary I watched, Nina Simone declares, had she gone on to be a classic pianist instead of a civil rights jazz artist, maybe she would have been happy. 

I learn a passionate heart is both good and bad for you.

-- January

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Mistletoe Magic Mirror Gel and Body Lotion

Holiday 2001

Found on Ebay, user amd_sales

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Bath and Body Works Candy Apple Anti Bacterial Moisturizing Hand Lotion

Holiday 1999-2000

Found on Poshmark, user trendyplace

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon Holiday Shimmer Luminous Body Glistener Shimmer Gel

Holiday 2000-20001

Found on Ebay, user hlymph99

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

My Juniper Breeze Holiday Shimmer came in the mail. This smells just as good as it did when I had it in middle school!

BBW Juniper Breeze Holiday Shimmer Luminous Body Glistener

1999-2000

My personal pictures from my collection

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Bath and Body Works Holiday Collection Toasted Hazelnut Pillar Candle

Holiday 1999-2000ish

Found on Ebay, user nonniesbigattic

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Mulberry Spice Body Splash and Moisture Rich Body Lotion

Holiday 1999-2001ish

Body splash found on Ebay, user sweet_scents_plus

Body lotion found on From the Heartland: Vintage Bath and Body Works tumblr

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Holiday Collection Vanilla Bean Noel Shower Gel

Holiday 2003

Found on Mecari, user ship5

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Sparkling Snowflake Body Lotion

Holiday 2000 or 2001

Found on Ebay, user just4us2012

I so want to buy this, but it $100 and although I've paid that much to repurchase old products....maybe I should. I'll regret it if I don't.

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Candy Apple Moisture-Rich Body Lotion

1999-2001

Found on Ebay, user dandjl996

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Bath and Body Works Night Blooming Jasmine and Warm Vanilla Sugar Holiday Shimmer

1999-2001

Night Blooming Jasmine found on Pinterest, user Courtney Martin

Warm Vanilla Sugar found on Ebay, user sublime6787

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Art Stuff Twinkle Twinkle Glitter Splash

1999-2000

found on pinterest

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW At Home Holiday Home Fragrance Winter Forest Votives

late 1990s-early 2000s

Found on Ebay, user apinchofpretty

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Holiday Shimmer in Juniper Breeze

2000-2001

from From the Heartland tumblr

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Sweet Pea Holiday Shimmer Luminous Body Glistener

Holiday 2000 or 2001

found on ebay, user pickermoneyflipper