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Papering over the cracks
Looking in the mirror this morning I see the same face reflected back as always. This face however takes me back to when I was sixteen. My acne was out of control and having to go to that torturous place known as school had become a daily nightmare. My day would start half an hour earlier then most of my fellow school goers because I needed that half hour for cover up. Using all the make up that I could afford to buy with my crappy bar job wages I would carefully apply thin layer after thin layer in the hope I might look marginally better. Very rarely I did. I could only afford crap make up with the crap wages I was on. The pound store stuff like constance carrol and collection 2000. The only shades concealer they seemed to do were light orange and dark orange and only in the stick version. Combine that with a person so frustrated with their skin, so mortified at having to be seen by judgemental kids and a crap orange face powder and the results were often, quite frankly scary. You weren't allowed to wear makeup in school. The unwritten rule was so long as wasn't thick black eyeliner and day-glo red lipstick the staff would turn a blind eye.
One morning after a particularly over enthusiatic bout of makeup applying my math teacher called me outside. He told me to go wash that muck off my face, that I looked ridiculous. I tried to tell him about my skin, about the acne and how dreadful I looked without it but he pooh poohed my 'backchat' stating I looked even more dreadful with it on. To be sixteen and told you look dreadful by a grownup, well its soul destroying. As I stood in the bathroom trying to scrub at the makeup with cold water and a wad of hard paperlike toilet tissue I began to think of what people would say when I went back into the classroom. How they would nudge each other and snigger at the state of my skin. It was starting to look redder and angrier with each swipe of the tissue. Some of the whiteheads had burst and some recently burst spots had started to bleed. It was at that point I lost it. I put my hands over my face and started to cry. I don't know how long I stood like that letting the salt tears pool in my hand and sting my senstive angry skin but the next thing I remember was my year head coming in and asking why I was so upset. I managed to hiccup out the story of how Mr. S had made me wash off my makeup and how embarrassed I was about my acne and that everyone was going to laugh at me. She asked me to come with her to her office.
It was a small room off one of the corridors and I had never been there before. Most pupils only got to see the inside of her office when they got into trouble. There was a desk, a chair for her and two other chairs for visitors. She sat down in one of the visitors chairs beside me. She pulled her handbag from underneath the table and rummaged around pulling out her makeup bag. Three items. Foundation, concealer and a powder compact. She told me to go ahead and use them that she would be back in a minute. Gingerly I opened the foundation and spread a little over my fingers. Opening the compact I gazed in the mirror as I rubbed on the makeup. It went on so smoothly and didn't sit on my face like my crap makeup. Opening the concealer lid I was puzzled as I saw a brush. I figured out I needed to twist the top of the pen shaped makeup. I saw the thick pale liquid start to roll down the bristles and brushed it on. Patting it in I couldn't get over how...un-red my skin looked. Once I finished patting on the powder with the cute little sponge applicator I sat back and waited for my year head to return.
She came baring gifts in the shape of two cups of tea and a time out bar. Opening the bar she gave one finger to me and asked me had I not been to my doctor about my skin? Do you know I had never once considered it? I figured acne was just something all teenagers had to go through and once you hit eighteen it would magically dissapear (ahahahaha). She said I should make an appointment, the she was sure something could be done. After I finished my tea she told me that she had spoken to Mr S. and that nothing more would be said when I went back. As I stood up she waved to the makeup saying I should keep it. Amazed I managed to stutter out a thank you as I quickly shoved the items into my skirt pockets. Going back to the class room nobody looked up as I took my seat. Mr S. wouldn't even look me in the eye no matter how hard I stared at him. The prick.
I managed to get about six monthes out of the makeup, eventually cutting off the top of the foundation bottle to get the last precious drops. Soon after I met Al and decided to go on the pill. While at the doctors she mentioned there was a pill that would help with my acne. I nearly snatched her hand off when I grabbed the prescription! Two months later my acne was mostly gone with only a few pink scars and blotches to remind me of what used to be there. For nine years I was acne free. Nine glorious no need to wear makeup every day years! Course then I got a new doctor who told me it was unsafe to be on that particular brand of pill for this long. Listening to him I tried a number of other pills. They didn't work.
My acne has come back with a vengance. Ten years on I have discovered my skin hasn't moved on my from my teenage years. A few more wrinkles but still the same old acne. Its depressing. Unbelieveably depressing. I got a new doctor who put me back on my old pill. However it takes up to three monthes for it to start having any effect on the acne. I just finished month one. I know I should be patient, that it will work but this is the pits. I feel so unattractive. People say that its only a few spots that I should let it get me down. How I haven't slapped any of those people yet I put down to great self restraint. A teenage boy took his life last year and in his note to his parents he mentioned how his skin had made him so depressed made him feel so ugly and worthless he didn't think there was any point in going on. Everyday, he said, was a struggle with the taunts from his class mates from strangers who passed him on the street from even his own brother he wanted the struggle to be over. My friend commented at the time how she couldn't understand why anyone would be so dramatic over skin. My friend unsurprisingly enough has never had to deal with a proper bout of acne. She thinks the three spots she gets with her monthly cycle is acne.
More then anything I'm grateful I'm a female. When my acne gets too bad I simply hide behind a layer of makeup. I've continued using the makeup brand that my yearhead gave me. Men on the otherhand, if they use makeup they get called gay, a pansy, fag etc. I wonder if I had of been born a man would I have got through my teenage years with my skin the way it was? I don't want to think too hard about what the answer might be.
One morning after a particularly over enthusiatic bout of makeup applying my math teacher called me outside. He told me to go wash that muck off my face, that I looked ridiculous. I tried to tell him about my skin, about the acne and how dreadful I looked without it but he pooh poohed my 'backchat' stating I looked even more dreadful with it on. To be sixteen and told you look dreadful by a grownup, well its soul destroying. As I stood in the bathroom trying to scrub at the makeup with cold water and a wad of hard paperlike toilet tissue I began to think of what people would say when I went back into the classroom. How they would nudge each other and snigger at the state of my skin. It was starting to look redder and angrier with each swipe of the tissue. Some of the whiteheads had burst and some recently burst spots had started to bleed. It was at that point I lost it. I put my hands over my face and started to cry. I don't know how long I stood like that letting the salt tears pool in my hand and sting my senstive angry skin but the next thing I remember was my year head coming in and asking why I was so upset. I managed to hiccup out the story of how Mr. S had made me wash off my makeup and how embarrassed I was about my acne and that everyone was going to laugh at me. She asked me to come with her to her office.
It was a small room off one of the corridors and I had never been there before. Most pupils only got to see the inside of her office when they got into trouble. There was a desk, a chair for her and two other chairs for visitors. She sat down in one of the visitors chairs beside me. She pulled her handbag from underneath the table and rummaged around pulling out her makeup bag. Three items. Foundation, concealer and a powder compact. She told me to go ahead and use them that she would be back in a minute. Gingerly I opened the foundation and spread a little over my fingers. Opening the compact I gazed in the mirror as I rubbed on the makeup. It went on so smoothly and didn't sit on my face like my crap makeup. Opening the concealer lid I was puzzled as I saw a brush. I figured out I needed to twist the top of the pen shaped makeup. I saw the thick pale liquid start to roll down the bristles and brushed it on. Patting it in I couldn't get over how...un-red my skin looked. Once I finished patting on the powder with the cute little sponge applicator I sat back and waited for my year head to return.
She came baring gifts in the shape of two cups of tea and a time out bar. Opening the bar she gave one finger to me and asked me had I not been to my doctor about my skin? Do you know I had never once considered it? I figured acne was just something all teenagers had to go through and once you hit eighteen it would magically dissapear (ahahahaha). She said I should make an appointment, the she was sure something could be done. After I finished my tea she told me that she had spoken to Mr S. and that nothing more would be said when I went back. As I stood up she waved to the makeup saying I should keep it. Amazed I managed to stutter out a thank you as I quickly shoved the items into my skirt pockets. Going back to the class room nobody looked up as I took my seat. Mr S. wouldn't even look me in the eye no matter how hard I stared at him. The prick.
I managed to get about six monthes out of the makeup, eventually cutting off the top of the foundation bottle to get the last precious drops. Soon after I met Al and decided to go on the pill. While at the doctors she mentioned there was a pill that would help with my acne. I nearly snatched her hand off when I grabbed the prescription! Two months later my acne was mostly gone with only a few pink scars and blotches to remind me of what used to be there. For nine years I was acne free. Nine glorious no need to wear makeup every day years! Course then I got a new doctor who told me it was unsafe to be on that particular brand of pill for this long. Listening to him I tried a number of other pills. They didn't work.
My acne has come back with a vengance. Ten years on I have discovered my skin hasn't moved on my from my teenage years. A few more wrinkles but still the same old acne. Its depressing. Unbelieveably depressing. I got a new doctor who put me back on my old pill. However it takes up to three monthes for it to start having any effect on the acne. I just finished month one. I know I should be patient, that it will work but this is the pits. I feel so unattractive. People say that its only a few spots that I should let it get me down. How I haven't slapped any of those people yet I put down to great self restraint. A teenage boy took his life last year and in his note to his parents he mentioned how his skin had made him so depressed made him feel so ugly and worthless he didn't think there was any point in going on. Everyday, he said, was a struggle with the taunts from his class mates from strangers who passed him on the street from even his own brother he wanted the struggle to be over. My friend commented at the time how she couldn't understand why anyone would be so dramatic over skin. My friend unsurprisingly enough has never had to deal with a proper bout of acne. She thinks the three spots she gets with her monthly cycle is acne.
More then anything I'm grateful I'm a female. When my acne gets too bad I simply hide behind a layer of makeup. I've continued using the makeup brand that my yearhead gave me. Men on the otherhand, if they use makeup they get called gay, a pansy, fag etc. I wonder if I had of been born a man would I have got through my teenage years with my skin the way it was? I don't want to think too hard about what the answer might be.
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I've known friends like your friend. They drive me crazy.
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(Anonymous) 2007-02-03 10:39 pm (UTC)(link)High school sounds like it was a terrible experience for you. Then again, it pretty much sucks for everyone except a few people. I always wonder about people who claim they didn't hate high school.
--squirrel
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Hope you find a solution!
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and hooray for your year-head; she sounds like she was a wonderful and compassionate woman.
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When life gives you lemons...
(Anonymous) 2007-02-08 11:13 am (UTC)(link)Re: When life gives you lemons...