How Acne Can Make Us Feel Worthless

When I was a teenager I hardly ever got acne. I never really thought about it either, even though the other girls in school all worried about it all the time. As I grew into young adulthood it suddenly changed. It gave no warning and happened almost overnight. It felt like that. One day I was fine and the next I could hardly see my skin because of the redness and the acne that covered most of my face.

I was shocked, but who wouldn’t be? I had always thought acne was for teenagers, not people in their 20s. Each and every day my face got increasingly covered in acne and everything I tried to make it go away failed. I even went to the doctor and they gave me many different options to try – none of them worked at all.

What happened then?

I started feeling ashamed.

I was so ashamed of my face and embarrassed every time I went out. No amount of makeup could cover it up entirely, but it helped. I hate wearing makeup all the time, however, so it was a little like balancing between two horrible alternatives every day – especially because of how people reacted to my worries. The makeup made others notice it less and they often ridiculed my intense embarrassment by talking about how it was not noticeable and how others had it much worse.

I’ve been told people say such little lies to be kind to you, but honestly, they only hurt me more. I became increasingly ashamed at my own embarrassment and felt worse and worse. I didn’t want to date or go out with friends, not just because it was difficult for someone with my diagnosis, but also because on top of all that, I felt embarrassed all the time because of my face.

Now, I’ve been dealing with acne for years and it is finally starting to improve. I changed my diet a few years ago and since then I’ve been trying different diets to find what I felt helped me control my Asperger’s symptoms and about a year ago I finally found what works for me.

To be real with you guys, I’d given up on my face. I felt it was a lost cause and a part of me had started to think that I would be alone forever, not because of my inability to understand social cues and handle social situations, but because I would be to embarrassed to ever accept someone if they asked me out AND definitely too ashamed of my face to ever ask anyone out myself.

You may think it’s silly, or you may know exactly how I felt, it probably depends on whether you’ve experienced something like this before yourself.

I felt trapped in my own image of who I thought I was. I felt that my face and my acne defined who I was, which is just silly. Acne is not who I am, nor was it who I was. It was just something that happened to me.

The funny thing is that my diet stabilised a few months back, around the time I began this blog, because I had finally found and properly started a diet that suited me as a person and made me feel good as well. Now, my face is no longer covered in acne. I still have acne, but my diet is definitely the first thing that made any real changes to it. Every time I eat things that I don’t usually eat my face reacts within 24hours and the acne starts coming back. I feel so happy that it’s getting better now, after years of struggle, and I have complete faith it will continue to improve.

I didn’t really think it would, but now when it has, I realised that when I look in the mirror I still see my face covered in acne, even though I can see that it’s not the same. I still feel embarrassed when people look at my face and I still feel ashamed.

That’s not all. My hair is big, bouncy and curly – it is the kind of hair that is entirely impossible to control. It bounces and frizzes like it wants to and I can either cut it all off or let it bounce away. I love my hair, but I hate how people always identify me by my hair.

People apparently think it’s funny to talk about how they can always see me from far away because of my big, uncontrolled hair. They laugh and make jokes about it all the time. I suppose they don’t mean anything bad by it, it’s done without any ill-will. But that doesn’t matter. It makes me feel ashamed and sad, because I always feel ridiculed and lost when they do.

It’s almost as if when you have something that makes you stand out from the crowd then that gives others a free pass to ridicule you.

Strangers, people I have never met or seen before, have for as long as I can remember come up to me and grabbed my hair, squeezed it and asked questions like: ‘Is it real?’

I hate people touching me and strangers grabbing my hair without warning is one of the most gross things I’ve ever experienced – and I still experience it very often!

People I know do the same thing and it irritates me so much.

I always loved my hair, but all those things made me feel ashamed again. I never knew what to do with my hair to escape the shame, so one day I cut it all off.

I was living in Japan for the first time, back in 2010 and 2011. A fellow foreigner that I met had told me she cut hair on her friends all the time and one day I simply asked her to cut all my hair off. It was summer and very hot, so my hair felt like always wearing a thick, wolly hat and that served as a great excuse to cut it all off. She agreed to do it but warned me she only ever cut hair on boys. I didn’t’ care.

She cut it all off and I thought all my problems were solved. Obviously, it didn’t solve anything. Ever since that day I’ve never been able to decide how to deal with my hair. I let grow, thinking I can grow it long, only to panic and cut it all off. I’ve been like that for years.

The real issue is that my embarrassment and shame, both about my face and my hair, are in me, not in my face or hair.

I can’t help but think about a post I wrote a while back: The Jonah Hill Snapshot. It was about how I still carried an image of myself as this clumsy, ugly and awkward 16year-old who couldn’t be loved by anyone. I never thought that underneath that image would hide yet another snapshot of someone I don’t have to be.

Feeling ugly and ashamed because of my hair and my acne problems have hugely impacted the way I interact with others and I don’t know how to change that. Even writing this I feel the pain of embarrassment because something as silly as my new profile picture.

I changed my photo from a pretty one that was taken by a professional photographer after a makeup artist had had her hands on my face covering up any blemishes I might have had, to a simple selfie. The selfie is one I took the other day, just a random thought that became a decision. I just sat down, took the photo and changed my profile picture on all my profiles to the photo below.

I don’t particularly like it to be honest. I doubt I would like any photo these days though, because I am still ashamed of my face and my hair.

My face is something that has affected me in many, many ways that feel so silly to me now – even knowing that I’m still very influenced by it.

My self-worth has been shattered because of all these years. You can’t get away from it. Any reflective surface or mirror makes me shutter and hate how I look.

I don’t even feel like talking to people on text because I am afraid that they’ll want to meet and then I’ll have to go out there in the real world where everyone can see my face. If people look at me, and remember I can’t read faces at all, I imagine that they too are ridiculing me and look down on me because of my bouncy, frizzy and odd hair and because of the acne on my face.

Something like acne, even though others may think it is a silly thing to worry about, can truly break your sense of self-worth and confidence. Especially, if you are like me, already very vulnerable.

Maybe it’s because I don’t express myself as others expect, but people always think I can take anything – they act like their words or actions don’t hurt me and that they can be harsher with me than they would be others.

Reality couldn’t be more different. I am so very vulnerable. I get hurt so easily because I was always afraid and worried about being different.

We all express ourselves differently, and even though I look composed it doesn’t mean I am. Harsh words are to me more painful than any action you can take and if you raise your voice with me I am two seconds away from tears and I will be well on my way to a major meltdown soon after.

You might not see it, but it happens none the less.

Perhaps, if I was more confident and felt sure of my own worth, I would not be so vulnerable, but I’m not yet there. I am trying, however, and posting that new profile picture was me trying my best to overcome my shame and embarrassment.

I remember my old post with fondness now, because I find strength in seeing my own growth from back then. I grew out of that illusion about who I was, and I can do that one more time. I can let my hair be free and lift my head up high, even though I still struggle with acne. I know my appearance will change, my acne will slowly disappear, and my hair will grow, and I will find a way to feel comfortable with it again.

Getting there is just not as easy as that. I don’t understand why people so often disregard the fact that even though one’s body has changed on the outside, our thoughts about ourselves might not have.

Do you know this feeling? This odd realisation that your appearance on the outside doesn’t match how you feel about yourself? If you did, I would love to know how you dealt with it.

I can only think to just take one day at a time and force myself to move past it. It might be hard, but then again, one day it might not be. But perhaps, when I get there, I’ll discover yet another illusion about myself that I was not aware that I had.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.