What I wanted was not for sale

As I kept looking into the body, one thing began to catch at me.

Getting through the moment, and changing something at the root.

The two are not the same.

If the pain or the discomfort goes away, that is enough. How much easier it would have been, if I could have thought so.

But I wanted, no matter what, to change the root.

“As long as it is fine for now” did not sit right with me.

So I looked things up.

What is said to be good, what is said to be bad. I took in knowledge wherever I could find it.

And in time I arrived at something I thought: I would like to try this.

―― Except.

It was not for sale.

I looked everywhere. The thing I wanted to use was not sold anywhere.

That stopped me.

The thing I want does not exist in this world.

So, what now.

…… Which means.

Slowly, an answer came up in my head.

There is only one way left.

…… I make it. Is that it?

I still remember how it felt, the moment I noticed that.

For the first time in my life, a choice other than “buy” had appeared in front of me.

I wanted to use ingredients from nature.

But “because it is natural” alone felt thin to stand on. If I could, I wanted scientific backing as well.

This part of this plant is good at a time like this ―― I wanted a way of working that had reasons.

So I went to school, to study French-style medical aromatherapy.

There, I learned how to make my own formulations.

The first thing I made was a cream.

By then I had come to feel that I did not much need a toner, so more than anything I wanted to moisturize.

It felt good to use.

There was also the satisfaction of “I could do this too.”

…… That said, my symptoms did not simply disappear because of it.

From there, for years more. Asking my own skin, trying, taking away, trying again.

Trial and error, over and over.

There was no shortcut.

But one thing did change, for certain.

Until then, cosmetics had been “something you buy.”

They sit lined up in a store, and you pick from among them. I had never once pictured them any other way.

They became “something you can make.”

That difference is much larger than I had expected.

When people say self-sufficiency, they usually think of food. A vegetable field, a rice paddy, miso.

But making the things of daily life with your own hands is self-sufficiency too, and a real one. That is what I noticed then.

Making, myself, what I put on my skin.

With just that, a small way through opened in a world where I had been sure that buying was the only option.

From depending, to standing on my own.

It was only the very first step.

(―― I will keep writing what came after.)