Chances are some distant cousin didn’t know what to get you for Christmas, so they took the easy route. They got you a gift card to Sephora, and called it a day. It’s cool, women obviously need makeup to be taken seriously, so it comes in handy.

Really, though. Sephora is like the North Pole for adult women, and we like glittery eye shadows and overpriced lip glosses as much as the next person with some Sephora points to kill. But have you ever noticed that checking out of Sephora is borderline mission impossible? It’s like every time you think you’re ready to hop in the checkout line, you get distracted by some pretty bottle of something you probably don’t need but want anyway.

The Sephora checkout struggle is so real. Here are the 18 stages of the challenge as narrated by Scream Queens GIFs because who else could more adequately sum up the fresh hell you’ll probably be exploring at the mall this weekend? Here we go.

1.You’ve been in Sephora for almost an hour. Your basket is close to overflowing, so you know it’s time to throw in the towel and head home. But you see a shade of NARS lipstick you don’t own yet, so you try it on to see how hot it looks on you.

2. You decide you might as well just give yourself a fresh manicure while you’re at it. Their color options are just so much better than the nail salon’s. 

3. Okay, nails are in check. Time to go home. Except you smell like soap when you’d really rather smell like the perfect combination of Britney Spears and Chuck E. Cheese so you’re all like

4. You forgot you needed a new concealer, so you’ll have to get that too. You’re trying to match your foundation to your skin tone like

5. A Sephora employee comes by to ask if you need any help, and you tell her you’re about to leave.

6. But she comes back around a second time, and you’re still in the same spot smelling the body lotions.

7. That’s it. You’re outta here. You check yourself in the mirror one more time to make sure you’ve reached hotness capacity.

8. You head to the register with the determination of an Olympic medalist.

9. But out of the corner of your eye you see a “Buy one get one 50% off sign” so, of course, you’ve gotta check it out.

10. Your gift card is only for $25, so you check your bank account and realize you’ll need to perform a heist or put back half of the fun stuff in your basket.

11. Being up to your neck in debt probably isn’t worth it for makeup, you guess.

12. So that’s it. You’re heading to the cash register for real this time. But wait… you forgot about the death trap that is the travel-sized goodie section up front.

13. You realize you need every baby-sized $25 shampoo and chapstick strategically placed inside little ornaments.

14. Wait.. what? No. You’re going home.

15. You get to the cash register and pray to Kanye you can keep yourself in check and not run back to grab that $30 cupcake scented lip balm.

16. When you see the total damage, and you’re like

17. But the cashier informs you you can redeem your 1,000 Sephora points, and you feel like you just scored a new convertible.

18. Everything you went through to get to this point was worth it.