Hi there, 16-year-old me,
I know it’s awful. The boils, rashes, lumps, bumps – explosions that leave holes, yes, holes in your face. But it will be OK. Yes, you’ll still get spots in the future, but they won’t be as bad and you’ll appreciate your oily skin at last because at 58 you won’t look a day over 50. Good eh?
Sometimes, after a boil has erupted, you have to wear a plaster. I remember the excruciating shame when your father, probably meaning to be kind, said it looked better when you used cover-up rather than a plaster. “Dad, it’s a hole oozing blood and pus and don’t mention it because I’m trying to carry on as though it’s not there, OK!” Except you don’t say that, do you? You just squirm. Other people make it seem worse: it’s not their fault; they are trying to be nice.
But I do understand that when you got a new skin-stripping treatment from the doctors and things improved for a day or two, then you’d get compliments, and that those compliments feel like daggers to the heart. They are worse to deal with than the acne itself, because it shows people are thinking about it all along, even when you have managed not to.
Anyway, before long your skin will produce even more oil, you are back to square one, and then they shut up again. Sometimes you don’t even want to wear the spot cover-up foundation because people offer you compliments. Anyone bringing up the subject of your skin – unless they are a doctor you have gone to see – feels horrible.
You didn’t mind being called Pizza Face as much as when people recommended a particular cure or cover-up. Not that being called Pizza Face is great, but it is better than pity and unsolicited help. Again, I give you permission to tell them to stop with the compliments and joshing, because it makes everything twice as bad.
The good thing is that, although you didn’t know it at the time (which was before people used Roaccutaine and antibiotics and hormone treatments for acne), more people had it, so you aren’t as alone as you might have been had you got untreatable acne in 2016.
You tend to make friends and go out with other people with acne. This is a good ploy because those people who insensitively moan at you over one tiny pimple are really annoying, and you are doing well to steer clear of them.
And I think you are lucky because, although you hate your skin and feel self-conscious and ugly, in the 70s we did not fetishise looks in the way people seem to now. Personality really did count for something then. So I know you’re hating it, but as far as acne goes you are luckier to have the worst of it then rather than in the new millennium, with its selfie culture and polarised, pornified pressure to look a certain way.
If I had to give you any advice, it would be this: you are good enough exactly as you are, acne and all, and never let not having smooth, uniform skin EVER stop you from looking at anyone right in the face. And you may be spotty (understatement) but you mustn’t hold yourself back because of this. No one minds the spots as much as you do.
I think your policy of trying not to think about it, trying not to look, trying not to squeeze, is pretty effective, which is why it is so annoying if someone else brings the subject up
By the way, acned as you are – not only on your face, but your back, your chest, your buttocks; and, I’m sorry to say, it will continue right through your twenties – you will be never short of a boyfriend. But you’ve so much to look forward to, and you can enjoy everything this world has to offer – with acne.
Love, Philippa