i come up here and I just smell all my candles!!

healing my mental health with extravagant candles

For years, I’ve waged a campaign to find the perfect wood fire scented candle. I found it and purchased it once, almost ten years ago, while killing time in an Urban Outfitters. It was a big, chunky boi and lasted me for years. Multiple roommates, subjected to my candle fixation, also fell in love with it. This perfect candle smelled like a cozy fireplace that’s finally warmed a cold, drafty room: smoky, wood, warm, with just a hint of spice and pine. But even that description pales in comparison to just how good that candle was, and how much I miss it, even years after I burned it down to the very last bit of wick and wax.

Once I realized how perfect the scent was and realized I needed to order as many as I could afford, it completely disappeared from the internet. I couldn’t find it at Urban Outfitters or anywhere else for that matter (it was UO branded, and unclear from the packaging who manufactured it for them). As with any other item I obsess over before it is discontinued I tried eBay and every other site that might resell such a product, to no avail.

I have a Candle Problem so to speak, but not a Yankee-Candle-as-COVID-spread-problem (although reading this article did scare me enough to go sniff every candle in my house).

In my quest to find that perfectly scented candle, I’ve amassed an impressive collection of candles that all vaguely smell like a wood fire but still don’t smell like a real convincing wood fire. I’ve bought more and more candles in the hopes that I will find the wood fire scent that is exactly right. To make matters worse, this shopping habit has only worsened while locked down this year.

Aromatherapy, that illusive idea of scent-as-healing, gets a bad rap in my experience. Scents are powerful and particularly connected to memory, and the effect they have on the body and mind can be dramatic.

Or perhaps I’m just a sucker for candle copywriting. I’m far from the only one: after all, if you want to dive into the essential oils world, you’ll quickly learn that aromatherapy has been the lynchpin of many an ongoing pyramid scheme.

It’s a woman’s (particularly us white women’s) proverbial teddy bear that soothes us when we can’t escape something at home (in my case, that thing is COVID). Remember Jan from The Office’s infamous “Dinner Party” episode? She claims to need investors for her “Serenity by Jan” candle-making business, but it is obvious her candle-making hobby is less of a business venture and more of a refuge, a belief in something other than the Great Unknowns of life as a fired executive of a failing paper company.

Scents provide fantasy and escape, but they also alter how we feel, move, act, and interact within a space. For example: I do believe that my Pilgrim’s Pride candle by Rebels & Outlaws purifies a room when I’m tense, and helps me gain some strength—so much so that I’ve re-purchased it several times over the past year. I burn it while reading tarot cards and seeking clarity.

I coveted the subtle earthy spice of the LUCIA Sea Watercress & Chai Tea candle after sniffing it once in a now-closed boutique long ago. I added it to my Amazon wishlist and drooled at the thought of it for months and months before finally purchasing it. When it arrived, it smelled more understated than I remembered, yet the feeling I’d had when I first found it—that rush of smooth, breezy lusciousness—remained.

During the pandemic, I tried to steer towards small local candlemakers, convinced that now is the time that I’ll find my illusive, mythic wood fire candle dupe. I’ve become low-key obsessed with Queer Candle Co., and now own a ton of their scents, not because any of them are the right kind of smoky, but because they all smell like homes I have known. Pine for the time I lived in the Hudson Valley, Ginger Tea for the first apartment that felt like a real adult home, Orchid and Sea Salt for a specific era of going out in my neighborhood in my twenties. When I tried QCC’s Cauldron Fire candle, I had what were admittedly too high of hopes. It still doesn’t compare to that first wood fire candle that I feel in love with, but the thrill of the chase remains, even after years of searching.

When I chide myself for spending money on candles—just scented wax and a wick—I try to remind myself that because I support small businesses and local makers, it’s not so bad. Nowadays, given the economy, I tell myself that it’s ok to buy from them (although certainly buying candles is far less helpful for small businesses, makers, and others whose livelihoods have been ruined by the pandemic than whatever you might donate on Giving Tuesday).

Is this narcissistic and self-aggrandizing way to look at my spending? Probably. But isn’t this how we often justify spending money on luxuries under capitalism? By rationalizing our worries and fears through the purchase of a product and its promise? This will be the perfect weighted blanket; the right lead for my dog; the artisanal mustard of my dreams. There is, as they say, no ethical consumption under capitalism, just a lot of justification tinged with the root of whatever it is we’re worried about.

What I do have is a goal: to one day soon find a respectable replacement for my favorite wood fire candle, in order to assuage my fears. The fear that we’re not as close to a vaccine as we think we are; my guilt about feeling stir crazy in my perfectly lovely apartment; my concern that Trump is going to do something exceedingly dumb and dangerous before leaving office; my anxiety over graduating from grad school next year only to end up facing a volatile job market; and any number of other Great Unknowns.

But in all seriousness, if you know a wood fire scented candle (or any other scent for that matter) that I should check out, pleeeeease let me know.