I started off my last blog by explaining how guys don't give a flying rat's asshole about getting cuticle pushes and brazilian waxes or anything that can't be handled with scissors and whatever hair-goo is in the bargain bin at CVS. Well let this be a testament to that theory. My face broke out last week. Not in an insanely gross way (like it did in middle school), but I cultivated a few more zits and blackheads than usual, and of course the crown jewel is the big ruby-red pimple in the middle of my right cheek. On top of that, I've been working a ton of overtime and my hands are taking a beating as a result. They're extremely dry and cracked, and my thumbs are essentially two opposable calluses. Right now, at this exact second, I have $60 worth of product that helps cleanse your face and exfoliate dead dry skin. AND STILL I have not used them for reasons I can't explain.
As someone who dealt with semi-bad acne in junior high, I can say with utter sincerity that back then I would have fallen to my atheist knees, like Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank, and thanked every conceivable God or holy alien in the book, IF my face suddenly looked as clear as it does now. That gratification would have been worth my indentured servitude for the rest of eternity.
I used to think the absolute worst part of it all was the false sense of hope inspired by those fucking Neutrogena commercials, which suggested the only reason my face looked like fried hell was because I wasn't cleaning it adequately. Cut to the graphic of a profiled pore looking like a crud-filled facial mine shaft about to erupt like Old Faithful. Thanks for that image.
Now I know the worst part wasn't the effect those commercials had on me, but the effect they had on the girls I was desperately trying to get into the back row of a movie theater. In near obsessive compulsion, I washed my face more often and with more cleansers, creams, bars, gels and foams than any mammal should in order to convince the world that I was not dirty. Little did I know what diminishing returns I was getting by constantly irritating my volatile skin. Ultimately it came down to nothing more than a crappy set of genes and hormones. There was no cleanser on earth strong enough to wash away the dirt in my pores or the shame in my teenage soul.
I was convinced it would never end. Because everything I saw implied the problem was dirt, and you can't very well rid the world of dirt, can you? I begged for Accutane, but my dermatologist insisted the side effects (depression, ironically) were quite extreme and my mild case didn't warrant such aggressive action. I only wish that some heroically empathetic individual could have tapped me on the shoulder and explained there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, but in a year or two my face would clear up on it's own. At least then I could imagine and dream about a brighter, clearer future.
I'm not self conscious about my skin any more. I wasn't scarred emotionally and I'm the first guy to point out how bad my skin is, and the last guy to ever call someone a pizza face. Why? Because it got better after I finished puberty and my hormones weren't on tilt. I said before that if one day I woke up and my skin was magically clear, I would have been overcome with joy and probably considered it some form of divine intervention. Well, my skin is basically clear now (aside from the occasional break-out), and I could care less. I just never even think about it.
Is this just a funny example of the banal, miniscule problems we thought plagued us as kids? Is it easy to look back and laugh, or should we just constantly be thanking goodness for all of life's pleasures we experience on a daily basis? Or more importantly, should be consider every bullet we dodge in life as a blessing of some sort?
There's a limit to the amount of stress or happiness a person can experience without the aid of drugs. I really wish I had the capacity for happiness to look in the mirror every morning and truly appreciate what it's like to not have a face full of pimples...or be homeless, or a quadriplegic beggar in some Calcutta bizarre. How sweet would life be if that was possible? But you see it works both ways, because it's perfectly plausible that the pizza-face teenager experiences the same level of misery as the quadriplegic beggar. Just because that's their condition. It's all they know. For example. I don't know if it's possible to experience more misery than when you wake up at 5 AM and as you slink out of bed and make your way to the bathroom, you stub your toe on the side of the bed. For that split second of crushing pain, you know exactly what it's like the be the most miserable person on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, it's a little more tricky to experience what it's like to be the happiest person on earth. Perhaps the key is pleasure taken from the misfortune of others, so everyone better thank God for that quadriplegic beggar who makes us look good. (Hopefully he's not that half a person waiting to hear the rest of the salt story. Talk about kicking a dude when he's down. Sorry bro.)
The true blessing in disguise.
love,
Bobby
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