Maturity

I'm almost, to the day, one month outside of turning 24 years old. On the edge of a quarter century old. And I've just had the worst acne break-out that I've had since I could still call myself a teenager.

It's so bad that words don't really do it justice. It feels like it needs its own extended metaphor, something involving pizza or rough road. But maybe not, since everyone knows how a really bad break-out feels, right? When you can actually feel, in your bones, where the next blemish is going to appear, like some sort of human dousing rod of disfigurement? The general throbbing unpleasantness that comes with it and the complete knowledge that the cool kids are mocking you? It's all right there, like I never left high school. Although now there are fewer cool kids around, but the ones who are left are vicious.

Suddenly I'm 16 all over again. And just like then, nothing helps. I've got my two different kinds of face wash - exfoliating and oil removing, which I use religiously (naturally - I am a conceited gay man after all) but my face is indifferent to my ministrations. Angry red spot that defy the natural order of both size and frequency all over my once not-unpretty face. Probably stress related, which was the order of the day back in high school too, but I wouldn't put it past the approximate 14 pounds of sugar I ingest daily to have played some small part.

It's quite the blow to one's self esteem, especially when, like me, you place a lot of stock in appearances. Why, oh why couldn't I have learned to value what is inside a person rather than the asthetics? I knew it would eventually come back to haunt me. And for that matter, why can't my moral lessons ever be presented in cool ways - prophetic dreams like in A Christmas Carol, or with hilarious antics followed by a nugget of wisdom like on The Simpsons, or even with sappy overwrought dialogue delievered by Bob Saget to one of the Olsen twins like on Full House? No, instead? Red spots, all over my face. God does not like to give me the easy options.

Although, I suppose I could have been more horribly disfigured than a bout of acne. But where's the fun in whining about pimples if you can't blow everything ridiculously out of proportion? I think it's one of those teenager things.

Don't look at me! I'm hideous!

There, I feel better.