Why I have embraced my facial acne

When I hit puberty, life looked at me and thought, “Wanja has not had the best life so far. Poor girl. I think I will make things slightly better for her by giving her a few torturous tonnes of acne.”

And so, like most adolescents, I was presented with a strong acne crisis that thoroughly enjoyed devouring my face and delighted in making me feel unlovable. My face looked invaluable to carpenters, as it could be used as sandpaper. A visually impaired person could teach him/herself braille on my face during their free time.

I was told that it was just a phase. They swore that by the time I would be 18, everything would have disappeared and I would be left with a smooth, clear, blemishless face, like a lotion model. They lied.

I am not far from 30 now and no one has ever seen me without pimples and blackheads since I was 13. It’s as if when God was giving out gifts and talents, I got acne. And it has literally stuck with me through everything and has lasted longer than my interpersonal relationships and jobs.

When battling acne, you will try almost every soap and cream 'certified by dermatologists', solely keeping dermatologists and skin care products manufacturers in business. And they are expensive. So you take loans, sell your father’s land, and sacrifice a relative you hate so that you can afford to maintain your acne lifestyle.

But you will still notice a new pimple every evening, young, strong, and promising to make you look completely hideous, like you have facial measles. And, if, like me, you have excessively oily skin, it doesn’t help that your sebaceous glands absolutely refuse to cooperate with your desires.

Then you will try all the rubbish home remedies that you can get from the internet, the ‘natural’ ways to cure acne. You steam your face with ‘healing’ herbs. You soak your face in fruits and vegetables to ‘soothe’ and ‘rejuvenate’ your skin. You scrub your face with spices to ‘open up’ your clogged pores. You scrape your face with the bark of a tree to ‘release toxins’ from your skin. You meditate in a difficult yoga position. You forgive your enemies. You pronounce ‘itinerary’ correctly. You even move to a new country and change your identity.

But the acne moves with you, passionately declaring, “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people...”

Someone ‘with experience’ will suggest that your diet could be the loophole in your grand Operation End Acne, er, operation. So you change your diet to foods and drinks that will not make your face a conducive environment for pimples to breed and thrive. But you just develop a nasty gastrointestinal condition which makes you break wind at the most inappropriate of times, costing you clients and a social life.

Once or twice you will find the ‘magic cream’ just when you are about to give up and embrace your calling to be an acne carrier. And that ‘magic cream’ will work. You will head over to the official website for the product and leave a flowery review of the cream, tearfully explaining how it has changed your facial life after so many months, or years, of painstakingly searching for The One. All those burnt sacrifices were worth it. All those nights you spent on a mountain praying and fasting while wearing sackcloth have finally paid off.

But the ‘magic cream’ will only work for three days.

Life will look at you and say, thoughtfully, ”Hmm, Wanja has been looking pretty happy for the past three days. This is highly suspicious. Let me just throw her a dreadful case of acne to add to her joys.”

And so, on the fourth day, the ugly legion of pimples will march back with their children and relatives and settle in painful clusters on your cheeks and forehead, or they’ll just decide to evenly populate your entire face. The largest pimples will hold a brief boardroom meeting and unanimously agree to conspicuously and strategically set camp at the most visible parts of your face like landmarks and billboards, announcing your plight to all and sundry.

And you will be utterly amazed by your special, unmatched ability to pack 15 million pimples, the size of watermelons, on your left cheek alone. And when you meet people, their warm, cheerful greetings will be a concerned or repulsed, "Wah, na si uko na pimples!"

Cheerful greetings

Some men, when thinking, will absent-mindedly touch their beard and stroke it. Me? Well, when in deep thought, I find myself absent-mindedly stroking a zit at my chin, touching it with the tips of my thumb and forefinger, suppressing the urge to pop it.

Recently, a child looked at my face keenly for several moments and asked me why I have little wounds on my face.

WOUNDS. Heh. There was moment of silence as my self-esteem fell down a high cliff, and I accepted my fate as a natural habitat for acne.