In my junior year of high school, I wore a full face of makeup every single day. I'm not talking a few dabs of concealer and a quick flick of mascara. I spent half an hour every morning taking precise care in making sure my brows were "on fleek" and my eye shadow matched my outfit. Prior to this, I didn't care much for makeup. If I wore any, it was a little bit of brown mascara I picked up from Walmart.

I'm not sure what initiated the drastic change.

Perhaps as I saw some of my female peers starting to apply more paint to their faces I felt left out or somewhat inferior. Ugly. All I know is that once I started putting maximum effort into my face each day, I never went out in public without my war paint. I got pretty good at doing my makeup, but am proud to say I have not watched a single tutorial on YouTube to hone my skills. I'm self taught.

While I may not be as good as all of those fabulous makeup gurus out there, I think I do a pretty good job of working with my cheap eyeliner and foundation. I've gotten many compliments on my work, so at least there's that.

Towards the end of my senior year of high school, I started to get lazy. Maybe I grew up a bit and realized I didn't really care if I looked fabulous every day. No one else did either. Sure, I did my makeup for myself above all - it made me feel more confident and beautiful and was lots of fun to do - but I started to value other things more. Like sleep. That extra half hour of snooze time in the morning was often much more appealing than looking my best.

From time to time and on special occasions I'd do my full routine, but my face became increasingly bare as time went on, and I realized that I didn't feel like I had to wear it anymore.

Now in college, I hardly wear any makeup unless I have an abundance of time or an occasion to do so. Unless I'm at a job interview, there's no one I need to impress. My boyfriend lives seven hours away so I feel like I can get away with looking lazy most of the time. And even when we are together, like all good boyfriends should, he says I look beautiful with or without my facial enhancements.

Presently, my overall thought on makeup is this:

No one needs to wear it. But, if you want to wear it and enjoy doing it, don't let anyone put you down. You look marvelous.