Here’s a silly product post for which I receive no free stuff or financial perks. I just feel like talking about it, and I’m not really even suggesting it for anyone else.
I started using Purpose® face wash back in the 1990s, and the reason I remember this is that a friend who I was around mostly in the 1990s asked me if I had a favorite product for cleaning my face, and this was it (and she had another friend who’d highly recommended it to her). For years, I used it, primarily because it’s so basic and doesn’t have a scent that bothers me.
Then suddenly, even before the pandemic and the supply chain problems, no one locally carried it anymore (I mostly bought it at Walgreen’s, and once they took it from their shelves, I looked at other places with no luck).
I tried other gentle cleansers, but most of them had scents I couldn’t tolerate–I felt like Goldilocks with my “too strong,” “too soapy,” “too perfumy” judgments and kept giving those soaps away to anyone who’d take them, or used them in my foot bath, because at least the scent wasn’t right under my nose. I wanted my “just right” Purpose®.
I rarely wore makeup in the pandemic years, and even when the public decided the pandemic was over, since I’m one of the stubborn people who continues to mask, because there are SO MANY different viruses and bugs and flus, and I don’t care if people think I’m weird, masking when I’m in public makes me feel a little more secure. If half my face is hidden, who cares whether I’m wearing makeup?
However, a few days ago, I decided to put on eye makeup, and then I thought about Purpose® and how much I missed it. So I did an online search and–BAM!–I could order it online, including this packet of four.
I don’t know. I can name so many horrors and problems in the world and among people I know, and I ache for all that and stay awake at night because of it. I recognize how utterly insignificant a face soap is in the larger scheme of things. Yet I also understand it’s not about the product. It’s about something that gives you comfort or brings a little normalcy to your life, whether an emotion or memory or moment of laughter or act of kindness, and yes, even some simple, tangible thing that has the power to make your world feel more like the world you want it to be.
I wish all those things for everyone.