True Life: I Survived a Huge Stubborn Face Pimple
- Hannah Markus
- Dec 27, 2016
- 3 min read
It happens every now and again. You see the signs early on and you hope you’re wrong. You hope it’s a false alarm, and you’re just being paranoid that the worst will happen, but your instincts were right. It’s small at first, but it grows rapidly, and before you know it, it’s out of control.
My name is Hannah Markus and I have been victim to a Huge Stubborn Face Pimple. It was a Sunday evening when I noticed the early indications. A slightly raised area on my cheek, about three quarters of an inch to the right of my nose. It was red and I could tell that the pore was blocked, but I exfoliated to within an inch of my life and went to bed. Monday morning it looked much the same. I put on a little foundation to disguise the redness and off I went to work. I was so unconcerned about the spot that I forgot about it all morning, until I went to the toilet after lunch. There I was, innocently washing my hands, when I looked up into the mirror. Over the course of five hours or so the small raised area had doubled in size. There was no white head, but it was an angry shade of magenta and was beginning to pulsate under the surface.
I hoped in vain that by washing my face and putting on a face mask overnight that somehow the condition wouldn’t worsen, but by Tuesday morning my fate was clear: I had a situation on my cheek. The spot was somehow repelling makeup. No matter how hard I tried there was no way I could disguise the pimple, now slightly larger than a five-pence piece, residing on my face. All day at work I could feel it there, it was throbbing so intensely it seemed to have its own heartbeat. I was sure that everyone I encountered throughout the day was staring, disgusted. That evening I met up with a friend for drinks and an ‘improv’ show, but she stifled a scream as I approached her, and the hipster glamour of the evening was tainted as I tried to interact with the bartender with a scarf covering my face. As I went to bed, dejected and covered in Sudocrem, I began to suspect that I was destined to live the life of a monster, disfigured and despised.
Two more days of misery would follow. Two more days of running to the toilet every half hour to check to see whether the pimple had grown or (dare I hope it?) shrunk. Two more days of watching my colleagues struggle to avert their eyes from my affliction. But on Friday morning I woke up to something wonderful. The pimple hadn’t gone. It was still there. But it was smaller. Much smaller. Disguisable, almost. That day I went to work feeling lighter than I had done all week. Something was lifting me up. Something like hope. And maybe it was this hope that made all the difference, because over the next few days the situation became less.
By that Monday evening I took off my makeup to find that all that was left was a slightly shiny scar on my cheek. I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: It’s done. It’s done. It’s done.