Hiding Away

2009-01-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow I go see a dermatologist. I went to see my general practitioner doc yesterday, and she said my acne was bad enough to go ahead and put me on minocycline. It felt good to know I was starting some more active combating of this, but at the same time it was, as always, sad and difficult to walk into my doc's office and have her look at all the zits on my face rather than make eye contact with me (although to be fair, she only did that when I first walked in).

I found it really hard to go into work and talk with co-workers afterwards. I was extra-sensitive about how my face looked. And I have a job where I am expected to speak up and pitch ideas. But I couldn't handle my co-workers looking at me. So I kept my mouth shut much of the day, which is unusual. I wound up going home early and working from home the rest of the day. And today, I called in sick. I legitimately don't feel well, but I admit that part of me was quite relieved to skip a day of people not making eye contact with me.

I said I'd post some pictures, so they're below. Of course, they're kind of gross. So, you know, maybe don't look at them if you're about to eat.

2 articles on adult acne

2009-01-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

Is adult acne caused by hormones? "Eh, maybe not" says the Mayo Clinic.

Acne "significantly" affects patients' quality of life, according to the Archives of Dermatology. This study is a decade old. HOWEVER! There's not much research like this out there, and this is one of the few pieces of research I could find that didn't also try to sell me a skincare system.

A Lenghty Introduction

2009-01-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

I am an American woman in my mid-30’s. I have a great job, a wonderful husband, and live in an awesome neighborhood. My life is filled with good friends, good family relationships, and good health. And I have pretty intense acne. Throughout my 20’s and 30’s, it’s been better and it’s been worse. I have seen dermatologists, cosmeticians, estheticians, massage therapists, and chiropractors to try and heal my face. I’ve gone off coffee and back on again. I’ve spent probably thousands of dollars on face masks, washes, toners, and spot treatments entirely because they promised me clear skin. I’ve spent probably as much money on cosmetics because they promised me the second best thing – the believable illusion of clear skin. Some fixes work, some don’t. But nothing has permanently solved this problem. Even when my skin is at its clearest, I have scars from previous acne outbreaks that will never go away. There are times when I can ignore the blisters and whiteheads on my face, when it doesn’t affect my self-esteem or confidence at all. And there are other times, like the past few weeks, when I am painfully embarrassed to be in public. When it physically hurts when someone looks at me. When I watch someone’s eyes meet my own, and then travel to my chin or my forehead. I know exactly what they’re looking at. I imagine what each person might be thinking. I want to curl up in a ball and disappear.
There’s a good amount of research out there about acne – why it happens, what can be done about it. There’s even some discussion about how acne makes people feel, particularly adults who were most likely promised their skin (and they) would “outgrow” getting zits. Many adults who experience stubborn acne outbreaks can feel so embarrassed about what they look like, they don’t seek any kind of treatment. They can become reclusive and depressed. They don’t talk about how they feel or how having acne affects them. I can certainly understand this. Over the past couple of months, I’ve pretty helplessly watched my chin explode repeatedly with huge, misshapen, painful blisters. I’ve dreaded looking at myself in the mirror each morning, yet I can’t stop doing it. I have no sense of what I look like to other people anymore. I have broken down in frustrated, embarrassed, angry tears more times than I can count. I have avoided social obligations and dreaded seeing people I love because I don’t want anyone to see me this way. I don’t want to experience any more moments where I watch someone’s eye travel from my own eyes down to my red, bumpy chin or my blistery forehead. It is a kind of self-consciousness I haven’t experienced in years. I think the last time I might have felt like this was in college, when I first started having bad acne outbreaks. It was my freshman year, and I can remember watching my face change seemingly daily. I couldn’t figure out why it was happening or what I could do about it. So I endured it, for lack of a better strategy. I wore a ton of makeup to cover it up and tried my best not to think about it. The next time I can remember having a really bad outbreak, I was working out regularly for the first time in my life. I felt really strong and great about my body. So the blisters on my face were just a reminder that not everything in my life could be absolutely great at the same time. But even though there have been times when the outbreaks were more contained, I have never really been without acne at any point in my adult life. There’s always an eruption somewhere on my face, in some stage of growth or recession. It’s something I live with – some days I’m better at it than others.

I’m writing this long-winded and thoroughly self involved screed for two reasons. One, I need a better way to express and manage the emotions I have surrounding my acne than my current system, which is to stew and stew and stew and cry and cry and cry and force my infinitely patient husband to lift me out of my own desires to hole up in a dark room with a bag over my head until this goes away (which I know from experience is, um, never). And two, there is such a fucking stigma about acne. We’ve all been told acne is the result of poor diet, poor health, and bad hygiene – none of which are true. We’ve also all been told that acne is the provenance of the adolescent. That the cure for acne is getting older and outgrowing it. This is also untrue. There are a bunch of reasons why someone gets bad acne. It’s in many ways, it’s a version of bad luck. Yet having bad acne can feel (and, frankly can be) disfiguring. And it feels awful. It’s physically painful and it’s totally embarrassing. It can make you feel incredibly self-conscious – like the only thing people see is pimples and blisters when they look at you. But most of us who suffer from bad acne don’t talk about how it makes us feel. We just endure. We suffer in silence. So I wanted to make a place where anyone could talk about what it feels like to have bad acne. This fucking sucks, but it’s part of me. It’s part of what I look like. And I’m tired of not talking about it because I’m embarrassed and I feel helpless. So I guess my goal for this site is to make it a place where other acne sufferers can come and talk about what they’re going through, what fixes (if any) they’ve found, and how they deal overall. And I want this to be a safe place too. I’m keeping myself anonymous for now…maybe that will change over time. But I will be honest about my acne and what’s happening. And I’ll probably write more about how having this acne feels and what it’s like. If anyone besides me winds up reading this thing, hopefully my writings about this won’t be too boring. But if you’ve had acne like this before, please feel free to speak up and talk about how you feel. It’s bullshit to feel badly about this, to feel so embarrassed that we cut ourselves off from the outside world. You don’t have to use your name either if you don’t want to. Just talk about how it feels. Get it out of your head and heart and gut. Uh, it seems like a comparison to squeezing or lancing a zit is called for here but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Although it feels good to want to make a joke about this bullshit all over my face.

The Acne Times

Hiding Away

2 articles on adult acne

A Lenghty Introduction