My lips are like Britney Spears.

I am having an allergic reaction. On my lips. I'm allergic to chapstick and all other forms of lip coverage so I usually use Vaseline. If you're scratching your head right now wondering what the heck a chapstick allergy means I'll enlighten you. A chapstick allergy means that you start become dependent on chapstick. It starts off as an addiction. You need to moisturize your lips ALL THE TIME. If you don't, your lips will dry out, crack, bleed, and generally hurt like the dickens. You're like a zombie, but instead of needing brains to live you need chapstick. You're a chapstick zombie.

Somewhere in the midst of this agonizing NEED to apply chapstick every ten to 15 minutes your lips start to react. They might peel a little, but what they'll really do is swell. Like breakfast sausages. Angelina Jolie will have nothing on you and your juicy juicy lips. Her's probably won't hurt and throb and peel, but they'll be miniature compared to those bad boys sitting in the middle of your face. Have you ever sunburnt your lips? I have and the reactions are pretty much the same. Breakfast sausages.

My lips decided to rebel against the chapstick and beauty industry when I was in grade 12. Since then I've only used Vaseline and the occasional Burt's Bees or body shop lip gloss. I'm careful, though, and don't use it very much or very often. No body wants peeling breakfast sausage lips if they can help it.

We hung out with some friends a couple weeks ago and she is allergic to everything. Seriously. She's allergic to pretty much everything. She was telling me that putting petroleum on your face is kind of insane (read: SO BAD FOR YOU) so I should probably try to break the habit. Because she's survived longer than I have being allergic to everything I figured she probably knew what she was talking about so I tried to give up Vaseline. I figured Burt's Bees would be my substitute.

For nearly two weeks I almost exclusively used Burt's Bees. Sure the tube was a little old, but it seemed to be in fine working condition. On Wednesday I realized that I was started to get addicted again. Every half hour or so my lips would start to dry out and I'd need more chapstick. Although my lips actually seemed a little smaller than normal, they were starting to feel gunky and like they might start peeling, which is gross. I switched back to Vaseline and now I'm all torn up inside. Everything still feels like it's reacting, but I think it's probably just going to take a few days for things to get back to normal. Oh the joys of having diva lips.