Cleanse, Tone and Confess!

After many months of trying – I have decided that my latest attempt at blitzing my skin of its imperfections has failed and my faith in the British cosmetic industry has exhausted itself. Microdermabrasion and glycolic acid peels are wonderful for a day or two after treatment however the effects are superficial and I cannot grasp at much more than a good week here or there.

Acne is a horrible thing. It is to most people like me, an insult to how hard we work to clear our skin. I have written before how I have tried every medicine and lotion and now I have ticked off acid and microdermabrasion too. The next thing to try is going to be the “revolutionary” NLite Q treatment. I have to go all the way to bloody Loughborough to get it done but if it works I shan’t complain. 

I am sure there are hundreds of others like me who enjoy full social lives and earn money like the rest of us but yearn to go swimming with a clear face or lounge even about the house with not a scrap of make-up on! Its a faraway musing but when most people can enjoy that day-to-day you feel envious. Especially when you see a make-up free youth chowing down on a big greasy burger with not so much as a blackhead to speak for the habits that you so carefully inventory and martyr yourself against.

The skin of a cherub is not my goal but at least a twenty-something face who doesn’t look like they are about to sit their GCSEs. Laser treatment is a venture I can’t honestly afford but I have got to that stage of desperation and impatience that I will persevere with whatever I can scrape together.

The treatment is painless which worries me slightly because the whole gratification of these treatments is in the pain you go through, as if in some way the more pain you endure the more likely it is that you will have achieved. I suppose this can be applied to exercise and similarly to other cosmetic endeavors. We use astringants that make our eyes water because the think they are stripping us like a baptism of all our skin sins, we exfoliate our flesh to the point of meat-tenderisation because like the socially conditioned ancestors of God-Fearing Brits (or whatever) we are we honestly believe that pain is good for us, good for the soul if nothing else! And like a sweaty pilgrimage to Canterbury in the days of Chaucer or a ritulaistic self-flagelation, we perfrom crusades upon our skin and if we are left raw and stinging afterwards we expect results!

I have applied these rules to my skin for the best part of my life! Unfortunately I need to do a u-turn and branch out more. Maybe I am too conservative, maybe a little more faith and a little less pain will see me through.