I post the videos. I show people how to save the planet. I use glass jars for everything. My kids are grown now and they tell their friends their mother is a NATURE freak. They think I hate plastic. They think I hate anything that isn't PURE. If my followers saw my basement they would call me a fake. They would say I'm a liar. Maybe I am. My husband is in Chicago for work. He is always at those big hotels. He calls me and asks if I did the compost. I say yes. I tell him the house smells like lemons and vinegar because I cleaned the floors. But he is gone for three days. As soon as his car left the driveway I went DOWNSTAIRS. Behind the old boiler. Behind the boxes of clothes from back home that I never threw away even though I tell people to MINIMIZE their lives. I have a box. It is full of candles. Not the beeswax ones I sell on my site. Not the wood wick ones that cost forty dollars. These are the cheap ones. The paraffin ones from the big store. They smell like fake vanilla and mountain air. They are full of chemicals. I know they are BAD for the lungs. My mother back home used to light one when the power went out. It was a treat. We were poor but that smell felt like RICH people lived with us. I took out the vanilla one. It has a blue lid. I sat on the cold floor in the dark. I lit it with a plastic lighter. Another thing I'm not supposed to have. I watched the flame. It's not like the natural ones. It flickers different. The soot started coming off. A little black smoke. I breathed it in. It felt like I was back in the old kitchen with my sisters. Before we moved here. Before I had to be this PERFECT woman who never makes trash. My son called me while I was sitting there. I didn't answer. He probably wanted to ask about his laundry or some money. He thinks I'm upstairs reading a book about soil. I'm sitting in the dark smelling CHEAP perfume. I started crying. I don't know why. Maybe because my father is in that home now and he can't smell anything. He doesn't even know my name half the time. He thinks I'm his sister. I want to bring him a candle but they say it's a FIRE hazard. Everything is a hazard now. I let it burn for three hours. The whole basement smelled like a MALL. I loved it. I HATED that I loved it. I kept thinking what if the smoke detector goes off. What if the neighbors see the light through the tiny window near the dirt. They think I'm the lady who saves the bees. They would post about me online. They would say she is a FRAUD. My husband would be so disappointed. He worked so hard to build this brand for me. He says we are big voices now. I heard a noise upstairs. I jumped. I blew it out fast. The smoke was thick. It smelled like burnt wax and chemicals. I felt sick but I wanted to light it again. I put the lid back on. I hid the box under a pile of old rugs. I had to scrub the soot off the wall with a sponge. I used the natural soap I make. It didn't work good. I had to use the HIDDEN bleach. I keep that in the basement too. It is 2am now. I am lying in bed. My husband texted me a picture of his salad. He says he misses my cooking. I feel like a snake. The smell is still on my fingers. I keep sniffing my hand. I can't sleep. My heart is beating too fast. I'm fifty years old and I'm hiding like a child. I'm afraid of a CANDLE. This is what my life is now. Just pretending for the camera. I keep thinking about the trash. I have to drive the burnt candle to the gas station tomorrow. I can't put it in our bin. My husband checks the bin. He weighs the trash. He wants to see if we can get to ZERO. I will hide it in a brown bag. I will throw it away where nobody knows me. I will come home and post a picture of a tree. I will tell everyone to BREATHE deep and be clean. I'm tired. My eyes hurt. I just want to be regular. I don't want to be an example anymore. But the money is good. The house is paid for because of the jars and the labels. I will do it again next month when he goes to New York. I already bought a new one. It smells like 'Summer Rain'. It's in the car trunk under the spare tire. I am a very bad person. I don't think I can stop.