When I was a little girl, around age eight, I started to pick the skin on my face. It was another in a long line of anxious, unhealthy habits I was picking up around that time. Some were incredibly embarrassing, and some were harmless. I would pull dry skin off my lips too or bite my fingernails.
But the picking of my face was the most obvious and the most painful. I would stand in front of the mirror for hours if my parents didn’t notice and pull me away, taking a beautiful young face with very few blemishes and turning it pinch by pinch into a bruised, scabbed, flaky mess.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized it was going to be a real problem for me, I remember one afternoon sitting in Geometry class, I was using my pen cap to scrape oil of my face. I felt a scab pop open and then I was bleeding from my face, in geometry, in the back of the class. And I was like – why? Why do I do this? Why don’t my hands just stay still? Why aren’t I taking notes? Why would anyone want to spend time with me if my face is just going to randomly bleed?
Isn’t this unattractive?
And it’s then that my inner voices clashed, and they’d go on to clash for another six years:
This is how I am. I’m perfect how I am. The world can’t tell me how I should be.
You are being ugly, and self-destructive, when you want to be pretty, and likeable. It just isn’t going to work out.
The Right Person Will Think
I am Pretty
The right person will think I am pretty.
The wrong person will think this is pretty.
And so on and so on.
As this went on, I was starting to get worse. Lumps and bumps and craters on my face that I had caused were adding to my need to smooth, flatten, equalize my face. I was starting to use my nails, dig in deeper, go harder, and eventually I lost sight of what my face actually looked like. What skin actually looked like. It would heal for a day, and then I’d go again tomorrow, undoing any progress I’d made.
I found blood stains on my coats and hoods, my nails were dirty from oil and blood, and my parents hadn’t introduced me to skincare or makeup, so I just had to keep going. Worse, I was insecure about the marks and redness on my face, so I hid it behind my hands in class. And my hands would get working. I was making my pores larger, and my acne spread as I moved it all over my face and neck
Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night and I was picking.
I carried it with me through graduation, and into a marriage, where it hit its most intense. Sometimes he and I were shouting and I was already on my way to the mirror. Sometimes we’d fight a whole day and the next day we were fine, but I wasn’t fine, and I took it out on my face.
Then I started working part time in skincare. I don’t know why the manager hired me, considering my experience and my bad habits. But one of the requirements of working there, besides the uniform, was that we wear the cosmetics and use the skincare.
And the first time I put the makeup on, even though it was over my scabs and flakes, something happened; it went away. The urge to touch, to flatten, perfect. Gone. Like it was allergic to makeup and went to hide.
So, I discovered my weapon. I’d put makeup on my face, and for the time it was on until I took it off, the urge was quiet and I could have some peace.
For the next few years, I would wear makeup but then I would take it off and continue my destruction. Indeed, it was like it was waiting for me, ready to pounce, as soon as I stepped in the shower. So I started to work makeup into my everyday routine, not just for work. I made myself put it on, no matter how silly it looked over my reddened skin from picking when I woke up. I made myself do it. It stung, and it hurt to take off sometimes, but I did it. The open wounds would bleed through it sometimes, and leave streaks of poorly matched foundation. I kept going.
But the urge would still be there at night. So I started sleeping with masks on, if I could get my hands on one. That started to help with my oil. I started paying more attention to washing my face. I told myself, it’s just bacteria, if you wash your face there will be less.
But I was putting the bacteria on my face with my hands. Cutting into the skin with my nails. It was a little better, but I still didn’t know what my face looked like, really. What my skin looked like.
I moved out of an apartment and a relationship and back in with my parents. Covid had hit and I lost my job for a few months. I met my soulmate. Spent a bunch of money on him and makeup to use in my free time. He thought I was pretty, I think.
Moved into my first place alone. Got a new job – started to look at YouTube tutorials. Shout out to The Makeup Chair Youtube Channel. Yours was my first eyeshadow tutorial and you opened the door to everything I would learn.
I was posting some of my creations to Instagram. For the first time, I woke up one morning and a chunk of my face was more than a week healed. I felt it with my fingers, and it was like nothing I’d ever felt before on my face. Not since I was a very little girl.
I picked again that week and destroyed it. But I didn’t forget that feeling. A year later, I moved in with my soulmate. Kept wearing makeup, and getting better at it. Discovered sleeping in sheet masks. Woke up smooth. Stopped needing heavy products and started using skin tints.
Started going months without picking at a time. I’d still fall off a little bit here and there, but I wasn’t going in with my nails as hard either. So a little bit here and there was fine.
One night I did go all the way again. I felt so disgusted. I cried that night, all that progress, and I’d given it all up. I walked around with that same old face for a week and picked again the next day because I was so worried and hated myself so much.
And then, somewhere in there, I found peace, and it stopped. My skin is normal, like it was when I was a child. The urge is mostly gone. If I leave my face bare for a day, I might lift a hand to it again, but never like that again.
I decided to continue with makeup – after all, it’s still my shield, and the urge could come back. The night before my grandmother’s funeral, I was looking at myself in the mirror. The mirror is something I try to avoid when I’m stressed. I just looked at me, and she looked back, and the image of me, with a bleeding face, burying my grandmother, sent me swiftly from the reflection.
Now that my skin is healed, I’m just dealing with the leftover texture. I still have all of the little bumps that I used to pick, and my goal is to let them heal over the next few years, while trying products out that can make me feel as smooth as I was as a little girl.
Thanks for reading my story! I hope any of you that struggle with picking your face or lips can get something valuable from it and can walk away feeling less alone. I didn’t know anyone like me when I was little, who had these problems, but we can all talk about it here 🙂