I was one of those unlucky teenagers with unsightly acne-prone skin. It was all I could think about. I looked at all those other teenagers with great skin and secretly wondered what it was like to be them. I would have gladly traded my face for theirs in a heartbeat. The only thing that made it a little bearable was knowing that in just a few long years, it will be over.
Not so. Adulthood came and there I was looking even worse than I used to. All those years of popping had left my face looking like a roadmap to a ghost town. My skin was so scarred and hyperpigmented and I absolutely hated it. Looking back now, I realize how much I let this acne situation ruin my life. I had such low self-esteem that I actually believed I was really ugly. It’s crazy to me how what we believe about ourselves will either ruin us or make us.
For the longest time, I guess I was committing great sins against the skin on my face. In my teenage years, I was using petroleum jelly on my face which obviously clogged my pores hence the acne. I was trying to clear my acne-prone skin but then I was using the wrong product. Granted, there are people who use petroleum jelly on their faces and suffer no consequences. These are the lucky ones. My mother and sisters are such blessed ones; they can use anything on their face and have no problems whatsoever.
When I realized that the petroleum jelly wasn’t working in my favor, I switched to lotion. Back then, I didn’t read labels so I just used whatever lotion. It wasn’t even a facial lotion. I figured that as long as it was not petroleum jelly, it should be fine. I was wrong.
Things escalated. I shifted to brute force. I was so determined to clear my skin that I didn’t care what I used. This one time, I partially read that garlic was good for the skin and acne in general. I got some fresh garlic, crushed it, and applied it to my skin. I could feel the burn but I endured it because I was convinced that the longer I had it on, the better the results. Well… I was so wrong. I ended up with a huge burn on my face. If I didn’t know that garlic was capable of burning, I now was, and I was staring right at the evidence.
You would think that I learned my lesson and that I stopped experimenting directly on my face. You’d be wrong. I did many many stupid things after that but none of them helped with the acne or the acne scars I had on my face.
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It’s mind-boggling how we sometimes run in circles trying to solve problems and then when we least expect it and are not even trying, the problem is solved. That’s what happened to me. When I was in the process of making a moisturizer for my husband (you can read my story here), I was applying a lot of the excess oils and creams on my face because I didn’t want them to go to waste. Even though I was still breaking out, my face looked so smooth and felt so amazing.
The funny part is that I had no idea what was causing the change. It took me a while to figure out what it was. During the time when I was experimenting on making the moisturizer for my husband, we noticed that his skin did way better if he at least took a shower twice a day and reapplied the cream. I extended the same courtesy to my face. My face was still breaking out but I looked much better.
I finally decided to make a product specifically for my face. The moisturizer experiment for my husband was a success and now I needed a complete success story for my face. I religiously washed my face in the morning and at night right before bed. I was only using a moisturizer for my dry skin at first. Soon, I stopped breaking out and my skin maintained its smoothness but there was still a lot of work to be done. When your skin has been scarred for that long, you need more than just a moisturizer. You need a product that has the ability to erase scars while keeping your skin feeling nice and smooth.