Back in the day, when my mother and I used to have mall dates, we would sneak into Sephora, and she would paint my nails. Each fingernail she would paint a different color. I skimmed the aisles, picking from oceans blues to fairy tale pinks. At least two finger nails would be glitter. All glitter. Shimmering like scales on a mermaid’s tale. The glitter nail polish lasted the longest. Always the most durable, staring at me, when all the other colors had chipped and faded away, almost like it was trying to tell me something.
I began wearing it in college. My freshman year. I would smear it around my eyes or on my shoulders if I was wearing a tank top. My boyfriend would go to class with specks of it around his forehead, from kissing or sleeping with me the night before. Classmates would ask him if he had been out to a strip club. “Not exactly,” He would say smiling.
Soon it became my trade mark. Where there was glitter there was Mallory. Wherever I went I left a glitter trail. Bottles of glitter piled up on my dresser.
India was when it changed. My world became dipped in glitter and hung from the clothes line, drying in the sparkle drenched light. Everything was vibrant there. Everything felt more alive. Colors had meaning and glitter a whole new definition. In India, it came in the form of powder. My friend Kayce, bought a set of 10 vials filed with rainbow colored glitter. The set came with tiny metal insets that you would dip in the powder and then decorate your skin with. I decorated around our eyes with Henna inspired patterns, creating masks made of Indian sunset colors. You feel more beautiful wearing glitter. Like nothing in the world can touch you; you can’t miss home or the smell of weed with a hint of glitter on your body. That’s one lesson India taught me.
I felt a shift returning home from India. My world was not only shining, it was now glowing. From my toes to the top hairs on my head. I began to meet people. Girls, just like me, who were dousing their faces and bodies in glitter. I met them in bathrooms, in bars, in my college library. I met my future roommate, Gabrielle, the girl I would move into my first house after college with, all around the concept of glitter. Only she took glitter to the next level and it required super glue.
The day I get married, the right side of my face is painted in glitter. It shines in the May sunlight, off the slow flowing river, like tiny quartz crystals sprouting from my cheek bones. Gabrielle, carries around a tackle box full of Vaseline, superglue, bottles of glitter, and bags of tiny plastic stars, hearts and other happy shapes. She spreads out a blanket on the sandy shore, pulls out her props, and begins applying her magic. She glitters me and my soon to be wife. She glitters our bridesmaids, spirit parents, guys, girls, and strangers who are passing by the river access point. 
The sand begins to sparkle and it almost blinds you if you look at it for too long. The wedding feels unreal, unnatural almost. Like we grew out of ourselves and rose to a higher spiritual level. I marry Elizabeth, standing on the ledge of my favorite river. We hold bouquets of daffodils tied together with glossy string and wear crowns braided of grapevine and gold wire around our heads. We stand barefoot before each other and slip the Antique store rings onto our shaky fingers. I can still feel the way the glitter caked into my skin that day. If I could have I would have left it on forever. 
In the crease of my left eye, Gabrielle glued a pink heart to my face. Even after we jump naked into the river, even after the glitter slowly peels away, the heart stays stuck. Serving as a reminder, that love never dies. The glitter residue leaves ripples of shimmers and shines in the warm current, floating somewhere toward our future. I haven’t seen my wife in almost three years. Life can do that to you. But every time I wear glitter I see her in my reflection.
I move into a yellow house a few weeks after college, overlooking one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the Adirondack Park of New York. I live with Gabrielle and Ivy, another one of my glitter queens. This time we go all out. At our house warming party, Gabrielle sets up her tackle box on the floor of our room. This time the colors are deep blues and purples, the aura of life. Ivy and I are transformed into glitter goddesses. We parade through our new house with royalty, marching through the un-mowed fields outside under the June blue moon. We howl at it. We dance in our boots, pounding our feet into the soil, shaking the earth below us. We look back at the glowing house and it reminds me of a ball of glitter. It shines and shakes to the booming music from within. 
You never forget what your first home on your own looks like. And I will never forget that image. Walking back inside, through the glass sliding door, bombs of glitter going off in every room. Our wood floors became permanently stained with glitter. No matter how much I swept them that summer, the glitter stayed stuck to the floor boards. We didn’t mind one bit.
My spirit father wakes me up one morning saying he has a present for me. He hands me a clear plastic container full of big and small bottles of glitter. The container has the word Glitter written on a purple piece of foam in black sharpie. He bought it from a garage sale and knew I had to have it. I still have it actually, and from state to state, I have carried it with me. It has officially become my glitter box.
For my mother’s retirement party, I carry around a bottle of silver glitter. In the tent, as the DJ plays and the women dance, I flutter around and swipe glitter onto the faces of all the giddy guests. My aunts, my cousins, my grandmother, my old teachers from school, my mother’s girlfriends, my sisters, my six-year-old niece, Jossalynn. She almost does not let me glitter her. “It won’t hurt Joss, it’s just glitter,” I say as I shake the bottle and a shower of glitter falls into my hand. She hesitantly gives in as I swipe the sides of her face gently, “There now you have magical powers.” She looks up at me, “Really?” Her eyes are popping, but almost doubtful. “You can be anything you want with a little bit of glitter,” I whisper in her ear. She grabs my hand and we spin around the dance floor, becoming magical angels in the summer heat.
In Florida, the glitter is silver and pink and the colors that make up clouds in heaven. The glitter is light and fluffy. It has to be due to the humidity. It hangs in the air like your dreams. At the bakery I work at, we have shakers of edible glitter that we sprinkle onto cupcakes and wedding cakes. After decorating the yummy treats, my hands would hold the access specks of sparkles. I rub my hands together, washing them in glitter, and then run them across the sides of my face, like I am applying war paint. You don’t know how many times customers told me I have glitter on my face. Not to mention they loved it.
In all the cards, letters and packages I send home to my family, or to my girl and guy friends, in states near and far, I sprinkle glitter. Before sealing the envelope, I pour a river of glitter into the parcel of mail. The glitter jiggles like sand as I set the mail on the post office counter. The teller asks me, “What’s that sound?” I tell her “It’s the sound of glitter.”
I wear glitter even on my days off from the bakery. Whenever I am feeling happy, or the sun is out, or when I just want to feel a little bit more magical. After swims in the ocean, the glitter collects in the creases of my blonde streaked hair and it stays there for a few days. Even my hair begins to change into the shade of glitter.
I find the most glittery and glamorous festival of them all while living in Florida. Fantasy Fest. It is held the last 10 days of October, always ending on Halloween, and it raises the total population of Key West by over half of what it usually is. People parade around topless, with intricate body paint designs serving as clothing or costumes one would never think of. Glitter is littered through every square inch of Duval Street and confetti is thrown from the balconies of buildings that line the more than mile long street. I dress up as a glitter fairy. 
I wear black fishnet tights, a lacy corset, a pink fluffy tutu, and black feathery wings. I dip my fingers in all different shades of pink glitter and swirl them onto and around my eyes. My face is one fire with glitter. Somebody asks me where I got my makeup done. It’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten regarding glitter. If all else fails, at least I could become a glitter makeup artist.
I receive a small, spherical-like package in the mail, while at home in New York. It does not say who it is from, it is only addressed to me. I am talking to my father in the kitchen as I go to unwrap the tape holding the parcel together. I pop off the top and out explodes a storm of glitter. Silver and white and gold glitter. All over the counter top, all over the floor, all over the pile of mail. I look at my father and we burst out laughing. “You and your glitter,” He says to me as he goes to grab a broom. After all the times I’ve glitter bombed people, somebody finally glittered bombed me. I found out it was Heather.
A friend tells me he hates glitter. Why? I retaliate. And don’t even start with the environmental reasons and bullshit. We find something sparkly to complain about and believe that by ridding our world of it, it will somehow fix all of our problems and make this world a better place. A less shiny and pretty place, I’d say. I send him an envelope full of glitter and hope he doesn’t have a vacuum.
At the Montessori school I work at in Michigan, all the little girls wear shirts painted with glitter. The shirts read glittery messages such as “She leaves a little sparkle wherever she goes,” “I share my sparkle with the world,” “Born with glitter in my veins,” “Glitter, Sparkle, Shine,” “My favorite color is sparkle”. After Trolls came out, glitter became the popular new trend, especially for young girls. To me this all felt old. Glitter had been my fad for the past eight years and now it seemed to be the movement of our upcoming generation. I can’t complain. Glitter is meant to be shared. And by the looks of it, it was spreading fast.
I meet a man who goes by the name of Glitter, actually he was given the nick name at a music festival, and years later it stuck. We douse our faces in this magical potion and go out dancing in Detroit nightclubs, the green light picking up our hints of glitter and making our faces shine like sunshine over the dark floor. I’ve never felt more like a shining star.
The logo of the gym I begin working at is written in black and silver glitter. My boss is obsessed with this stuff, like myself. The new front desk has hints of sparkle in the quartz, the redone bathroom walls hold glitter in the glass tiles, the floor that will soon be epoxied, she has requested to have glitter manually mixed into the gooey liquid. I’m living in a fairytale. If you manifest what you desire long enough it might actually come true.
Wear it. Before you go out, on a sunny day off when no one will see you but yourself, if you’re going through a break up and it’s the only thing that keeps you smiling. Smear it. Start from the edges of your eyes and slide it out to the crease of your hairline. This will be your symbol. Your warrior face. Wear it proudly. 
Parade it about. Through the ups and the downs, the shitty days, the snowstorms, the hurricanes, the loves that you lost and the one you can’t quite have. Wear it. When you’re happy, when you’re sad. When your tears wash it down your face, or the wind and the ocean wipe it away. Wear it. Because not only do you want to shine every day of your life, you want to sparkle. You want to glitter and glow like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. Because baby, on the day that you die, it will be raining glitter and the whole world is going to wear it for you.
Just loved that blog!