Same Old Face

I have been struggling in recent years with this face of mine. I’ve had some issues with my skin after I essentially destroyed my skin barrier. The internet influenced me to apply retinol once a week for a year or two and my skin has never been the same since. I am sure some people had good experiences with it but the warnings really needed to be made clearer! My skin is now essentially every combination of dry, oily, sensitive, and I have been on a mission to try and heal whatever I have done to make it this way.

I am in my 30s now and I still get hormonal acne. When does that end? Does it ever? I don’t need an app to tell me when my period is due, because my face already provides that service for me.

Anyway, I have not been feeling great when it comes to my face and I tend to hide most of it behind my fringe or glasses. I often wonder if I have felt a bit shy ever since we stopped wearing masks during covid? There was a little bit of comfort to be found in having most of my face covered every day at in my job…

This is all just to say that I know there is absolutely nothing wrong with my face.

It’s actually quite nice sometimes! However being a person who stares into their phone for many hours a day has 1000% warped my brain, and I spend way too much time worrying about what I should be applying to my face. I put 100s of pounds of projects in baskets every week, only to close the tabs. I find myself pulling at my face to see what it might look like if I got X done to it. I spent my whole life accepting my nose, I used to hate it and then eventually I got to this magical place where I stopped even thinking about it. Earlier this year I was researching a rhinoplasty. I had to actually say OUT LOUD to myself - Wise up! What are you doing??

This is no shade to anyone who gets any kind of procedure done to their face, more power to you. Maybe I will eventually dabble in a little something, but I know they die in the reasons that I find myself researching changing my face is because I’m looking at other peoples faces all day.

I feel like being chronically online is accepting that you need to check in with yourself, And remind yourself of what you look like and who you are, and to embrace that wholeheartedly. It’s the only way to stop the comparisons.

For all my love clothes and getting dressed, I do think how we look is the least interesting thing about us. And in honour of that, I am going to try and share my face more and hide less. I know that nobody else thinks about any of my insecurities. And I know that when I am older, I will wish that I had not hidden my lovely, youthful face away so often.