“What’s that stuff on your face?”

Just like a lot of other people, ever since I was in about 6th grade I have struggled with acne, seemingly more than my peers. Over the years my acne has had its ups and downs and I’ve tried just about everything in the book to get rid of it and just recently I’ve finally started to actually see improvements. 

One thing that has always bothered me about having acne is the lack of representation of it in media. While I’m usually not a very self-conscious person, a lack of seeing acne in media hasn’t been very beneficial for me over the years. It creates a sort of taboo around acne even though acne is something completely normal for teenagers to deal with. It’s difficult to feel confident about something that you don’t seem to see other people be confident about.  

One thing that is really unfortunate about dealing with acne is that most of the time, no matter how many different recommendations you get from doctors, friends and family, it usually never helps and can just make it worse. Dealing with acne is also really expensive. It involves paying for all sorts of medications, soaps, lotions, treatments and appointments and most of the time most of that money is wasted on just “testing the waters” to see if MAYBE one of those options will be the magical cure. Eventually, if you do try all of those things and still see no improvement in your skin, a dermatologist would most likely recommend trying a medication called isotretinoin or more commonly known as Accutane. An expensive and fairly dangerous medication that is only recommended after you have tried everything else.  

As someone who has been dealing with acne since 6th grade, I just recently started isotretinoin. Since starting isotretinoin I have finally started seeing improvements and so have my friends and family. The amount of relief I have felt since it started clearing up is like having 6 years of stress about my acne getting lifted off of my shoulders.  

If you have acne, I understand how it can make you feel like you never want to leave the house or take off your mask because you are scared of what people will think and I just want you to know that you still look great, no matter how much acne you have.