I know the title sounds dramatic, but think about yourself when you were a junior in high school. Your self-confidence probably wasn’t through the roof, and you probably really cared what other people thought of you. Looking back, it was all a real waste of energy, at least to me. In my junior year of high school, I had absolutely horrible acne problems. I mean don’t want to wear my hair up, can’t leave the house without makeup, don’t want to go to school type of horrible. It took a giant toll on my confidence and self-love.

Growing up I played a lot of sports, from a young age it kept me in shape, and the way I looked was never really a concern or something I worked at. So, as puberty started to hit it was weird for me to have to be concerned about my skin and make sure it looked a certain way or was “right.” Playing sports, I knew I had to wash my face religiously, so I made sure I did as I got older. But still, nothing helped. My acne was just getting worse by the day.

I consistently got what is called cystic acne, if you’ve never seen it before, google it. It’s awful, and my case was much more mild than anything you find on google images. One cyst would take over my face, like when women tell men their eyes are above their chest I could see people’s eyes wander to my forehead or my cheek, or wherever I had acne at the time. It was the most devastating thing to not have people see me for who I was and only see these growths on my face. I’ll never forget the day at lunch a kid snidely asked me what had happened to my face and I knew he was referring to the thing under my eye and I had to quickly make up some story about how I had been hit in the face with a soccer ball the weekend before to save myself from complete embarrassment. Boys were nonexistent in my life, I didn’t want anyone looking at me, let alone someone I found attractive. I shut myself out of everything that was optional in life. I didn’t even take pictures of myself and avoided group pictures whenever possible, I wouldn’t let myself remember myself looking this way. I lost so many memories this way.

I cried and cried, I went to several dermatologists, I tried several antibiotics, even Accutane, and nothing worked long term. And I cried and cried some more. I went to school, I went to practice, and then I came home and didn’t leave unless I absolutely had to. It basically stopped my life in its tracks and I let it suck the happiness out of my life. That’s why now every time I get a breakout I stop everything and focus on getting rid of it because I don’t want to ever feel that way about myself ever again. And I hope no one ever feels that way about themselves, after understanding what it’s like to dread looking in the mirror I learned how important it is to love yourself and feel good in your skin. I would never wish any of that on my worst enemy because I’m just lucky to have gotten through such a personal hardship and to be able to love myself today.