My Acnelles Heel

The scars are still on my face... and my heart.

(**A few of my OG paid subscribers have already read this, so feel free to ignore this one. I will write something extra good for you guys next week. Promise!**)

Mostly writing this one because, when I came up with the title for it, I was so tickled by myself that I couldn’t not write it.

Recently, I was talking to a friend about their kid’s acne, and how hard of a time their kid was going through because of it. Upon doing this, it brought up a lot of my painful memories with acne. I think we hear a lot of stories about kids who were/are bullied for various things pertaining to their looks. And we hear a lot of stories about all the things adolescents were/are insecure about. Movies, tv shows, and books are created about the child who was heavy, or the teen who looked goofy until they grew out of it, and various other physical factors that people like to make fun of.

However, in my experience, I don’t recall many (if any) of them ever being about a youngster who went through a really hard time with acne. I mean, sure there are movies and stuff where a kid gets one pimple and freaks out. But I don’t recall seeing anything where a teen’s face was absolutely covered in cystic acne, and it was a main story point. In fact, when I have seen something where the actor had bad acne, it was covered up with HEAVY make-up and never addressed.

Of course, when I was growing up, a lot of movies and TV shows weren’t all that great about trying to make kids with socially unacceptable looks feel seen and validated. But, over time, and especially the last few years, I have seen a big change towards casting all kinds of different types. I have seen more stories that showcase neurodivergent individuals, disabled people, plus-sized persons, and so on and so forth. I have even seen shows, while very few and far between, that have women with facial hair. And there have been nice strides towards being inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community in movies and TV.

All of these are tremendous amazing steps, and we should be doing more and more of all of this. I know people with acne don’t face the same issues that other people in the above-mentioned groups face. I do not want to liken it to all of them. I just want to point out that I am seeing a push to make art that is inclusive of all of these things that society was previously calling “ugly”, “unacceptable”, and/or “offensive”, yet I haven’t seen anything made to normalize acne.

Well, I take that back, I remember seeing one thing, one time, but I can’t remember what it was. It was brief. And it wasn’t addressed or a plot point, but there was an actor with acne that they didn’t cover up. I recall whatever it was being pretty niche, and not mainstream. While I don’t remember what it was, I do remember feeling simultaneously very uncomfortable, and very excited. I was uncomfortable because I had always been taught to cover that up. And I was excited because I thought back to how much teenage Krista would have really needed to see that.

I started breaking out beyond the “normal” amount when I was in 5th grade. I remember this because I remember a girl in my class saying to me really loudly in the gym once, “wow, you have a lot of pimples on your face.” That was 32 years ago. I remember who said it, where we were, and I definitely remember how it made me feel—to sum it up in one word “AWFUL.” Not many people were breaking out yet at 10; I was one of the first. I was one of the last to get the cool things like boobs and a period, but one of the first to get lots of pimples. Enough that it was noticeable, at least.

As such, I started wearing make-up at 10 years old. My mom didn’t have a choice. I was wearing it. I was wearing foundation and powder and the works. I was covering that shit up. However, by the time junior high came around, my breakouts were so large and covering so much of my face, that even make-up was not hiding them as well as I wished. However, I counted myself lucky that I was a girl and not a boy, because “boys weren’t allowed to wear make-up” in that day in age and in my part of the country.

Starting in 7th grade, the box on the school picture forms for “retouching” always got checked, and my parents were forced to pay more for it. I don’t think any pictures or videos exist of my face without make-up for all of junior high, high school and most of college. I would not have allowed it. I was extremely self-conscious about sleepovers where I would have to take my make-up off before bed. In the morning, I raced to the bathroom to put make-up back on.

Also in 7th grade, I was a student volunteer in a kindergarten classroom. One day the whole grade school and junior high was at a pep rally in the gym, and I was with some of my friends and saying hi to my kindergartners. One of the little boys looked at my face and asked me if I had the chicken pox. One of the friends I was standing with started laughing his ass off at this. I couldn’t be mad at the kid, but I was so freaking embarrassed.

Doctors had put me on different pills and creams to try to help, but nothing was working. My parents didn’t have insurance and all of this was getting expensive. Make-up, prescriptions, appointments, and school picture re-touching. But both of my parents had severe acne when they were teenagers, so they understood my shame.

By Freshman year of high school, it had only gotten worse. My forehead, chin, jaw, cheeks, basically all of my face, was covered in huge, pustule, red zits. While I wasn’t the only person with acne, I only knew one person in school who had it worse than me (in my opinion). And this wasn’t me being overly critical. I look back now with a very honest and objective lens, and I still believe that to be true. I was definitely top 5 worst. However, I was becoming a pro at make-up, so that did make a difference.

I had been teased a lot for it by this point, and just kept caking on the foundation to try to cover it. However, a moment I will never forget, and I still think this was one of my all-time most courageous moments, was the one and only time I went in public without make-up. I was probably a Freshman and my brother had a baseball game. I never missed his games, and always went to support. I don’t think this game was special, so I am not sure why I didn’t just stay home. But, for whatever reason, I had decided I needed to go support him. The only problem was, I had run out of make-up and wasn’t getting to go get more until the next day.

I loved my brother so much, and wanted to support him so much, that I went to his game without make-up. That may sound like nothing to a lot of people. But I would have rather gone naked than without make-up. As far as I was concerned, I was naked without it. I just remember not walking around and talking to people like I normally did. Hiding next to my mom the whole time and keeping my head bent. Not making eye contact with anyone. I know when I walked in I saw people I knew. At the time, I imagined them looking at my face in horror. But I just kept my eyes down, didn’t say hi, and hid on the bleachers. I am getting tense now just thinking about it.

Sophomore year of HS, I went on birth control. Not because I was having sex (didn’t do that til I was 21 for crying out loud!), but because it was supposed to help with acne. I started seeing a dermatologist, and we tried almost everything under the sun. Nothing was working. The birth control definitely did help, but I still had worse skin than most. The only thing I wasn’t willing to try at this point was Accutane.

If you aren’t familiar with Accutane, it is an INCREDIBLY strong pill that can be very dangerous. It is known to cause people to get depression so bad that they were suicidal. And if you get pregnant while on it, it will absolutely deform your baby. To go on it, you have to sign a gazillion papers saying you won’t sue if you kill yourself. And if you are a woman, you have to be on 2 forms of birth control and sign a bunch of papers about that, too. In fact, it is so dangerous that you can only take it for 5 months at a time, and you can only do up to 3 rounds of it in your lifetime. As such, decided to hold off on this, as that was a little bit scary.

I went through the rest of HS almost never letting anyone see me without make-up, absolutely never going in public without it, assuming no one would ever want to be my boyfriend because of it, and being the only person under the age of 50 who was wearing Merle Norman make-up! LOL It was the brand my mom used, so I used it too. It was such old-lady make-up, that probably most of you haven’t even heard of it. I continued to go to the dermatologist on the regs. And everything we tried just helped minimally.

One time, in Health class, we did a section on personal care, and the text book addressed acne. The teacher taught us what the book said. Basically it was “to get rid of acne - make sure to wash your face at least twice a day, don’t eat chocolate, and drink lots of water.” I felt like a lot of the eyes in class were on me when that was said (they probably weren’t, but I thought they were). Rather than hide and bear it, you know me, I decided to speak up. So, I raised my hand and explained to the teacher how incorrect that was, and that for people with cystic acne like me, doing those things literally had zero effect. Which of course, just put more eyes on me for my acne. But, oh well, at least I could better control the narrative!

I can remember specific pimples. Is that weird? Like, I remember the day that my heart was broken was the day I had a huge pimple on my right cheek. It was about an inch under my eye and an inch away from my nose. Make-up wasn’t hiding it that well. Two of my friends betrayed me and told the boy I secretly loved that I liked him. He didn’t return the sentiments. Then I had to sit next to him in class right after it happened with my heart in shreds. The pimple had nothing to do with it. I just remember that zit cause it was insult to injury.

Freshman year of college comes around, and I still am breaking out like I always have. I was drunk at a theatre party one night and making out with everyone. Someone took a picture of me making out with someone, and gave me a copy of the picture. When I got that copy, I was humiliated. Not because I was drunkenly making out (honestly, to this day, no regrets), but because I saw how bad my skin looked. It was so late, I was so drunk, and I had made out with so many people that my make-up was worn off, and you can see my breakouts really bad. I still have that picture. It is the only picture in existence, to my knowledge, that shows my breakouts without make-up during the span of ages 12-25ish. I just never allowed it.

Sophomore year of college, I finally decided it was time for Accutane. I signed all the contracts. So what if it made me suicidal? I was already depressed enough about this cystic acne I’d had for 10 years. And I didn’t care about deformed babies. I was still a virgin. So, my two forms of birth control were 1 - the pill and 2- abstinence. Done and done. This medicine was also known to really fuck with your lipids, so I had to go have fasting labs done once a month. Whatever.

To be fair, this medicine worked like gangbusters. It really did clear up most of my skin. I did the first 5 month stint and I didn’t get depressed, I didn’t get pregnant, and I didn’t get fat. Now, I had pretty clear skin and finally looked like the Barbie I always knew I could be. 20.5 years old, 6ft tall, size 6, DD boobies, very long blonde hair, and clear skin. I got to enjoy all of this for roughly about 1.5 years.

After about a year and a half, my acne started coming back. Not nearly as bad as before, but I was terrified it would. So, I talked the dermatologist into giving me another round. At this point, I was 22, in a relationship, and sexually active, so now my 2 forms of BC were the pill and condoms. The medicine cleared up my acne, but this time it made me depressed and caused me to gain a lot of weight. My theory is that the first round used all of its power for how bad my skin actually was. It didn’t have any juice left to fuck up my lipids and brain chemistry. However, this second time, my skin probably wasn’t bad enough to be on this med. So, it had some left over power it needed to exercise. So the extra went to some nasty side effects.

I have never been the same since. I don’t know if I would have ended up with depression otherwise. But, I have had it ever since that medicine at 22, and I never had it before that. I have also struggled with my weight ever since. Which, could have very well ended up happening anyways. I have gained and lost a lot since that time. I fluctuated quite a bit for many years.

I definitely put my body through a lot just to not have acne. Perhaps had there been some tv shows and movies that normalized it, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so much pressure? Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so ugly? Since all I ever saw was actors being caked in make-up to cover it, commercials for Proactiv that caused everyone to ask me if I had tried it (pro-tip- Proactiv is about one step above water. It is useless. You can buy stuff at Walmart with a higher concentration of their leading ingredient for 1/3 of the price), and people making fun of me for it or making rude comments—I had no other choice (it seemed) than to be very ashamed. I had very little self-esteem for many years because of it, and I endured some crazy meds and side effects to deal with it.

I am much better now about going out in public and taking pictures without make-up. However, I will turn my face a certain direction if I have a noticeable one on one side. But I would never go to work or an event without make-up (except for when I didn’t want to work, and wanted to be sent home by my bosses for being sick. I would not wear make-up to work, and people would tell me how awful I looked and to go home because I looked so sick. Those moments were bittersweet). And, when I say “make-up” I mean foundation, powder and then all the other stuff. I am envious of girls who can just do mascara and lipgloss and have the look ready to go. I will hang out casually with friends, run errands, and make tiktoks without it. Sometimes I get a little insecure, but for the most part I am past it. Whenever I have particularly red ones though, I am insecure.

However, there are still a lot of instances where I feel I need make-up. And you know what? It isn’t just all in my head. A couple of years ago, I was getting my hair done, and one of the ladies at the salon made a comment about how different I looked when I wore make-up in my Facebook pictures, as opposed to when she would see me at the salon without make-up. It was said in a way that passively-aggressively told me I looked much better with make-up.

So, when a kid is going through a tough time because of having bad acne, man I freaking get it. To this day I still have hang-ups and triggers. I have dealt with it for over 30 years. I can still viscerally feel how much all of those moments hurt from the time I was 10 until now. And I am so glad we have so much more media now for all kinds of different things that used to be considered socially unacceptable for TV. I want all of it to keep going and to get more and more beefed up. And, I also wish we could get some for acne. It could really help normalize it and make it acceptable for youngsters. I would love that for them, because I know it would have helped me at least a little back in my teen years. Acne didn’t just scar my face. It scarred my heart.