Did it sort of impact on your social life?

I think it does impact on it a lot. When you do have really bad acne, ‘cos with acne it’s not always the same. So one morning you wake up and you’re going to have twenty of them and that’s the day when you’re like supposed to go somewhere with your friends. And you’re just like, Okay, I’m not going to go anywhere. I can’t even be bothered about it. ‘Cos you just feel, you know self-conscious about it. So it does impact on it a lot, I think. I mean school you can’t really avoid but, you know, on your free time you try to avoid it if you’re having one of those days where your acne gets worse.

So it has been the case because of acne and the way you’ve felt about it, you’ve avoided going out?

Yeah, I mean there has been, there has been where, if it’s been bad or something, then I’d rather just not go out because it’s like, Oh, God, I’m not going to show my face today. So, yeah.

I used to always wear my hair kind of like, like down like this, so that it wasn’t as obvious. Like say if I pulled it back in like a pony tail, then you could kind of see it. And I used to like prefer going to like parties or things when it was dark, so you, you couldn’t really see it that much. And I used to wear, I used to do my eye make-up like really nicely. So then people would kind of l-, notice that rather than looking at my acne. And, cos I couldn’t really wear any foundation or anything. So I used to do like eye make-up and then like really bold lipstick, so people would kind of like notice that rather than the spots.

I feel like if I’m having a bad day it’s bad in the morning but by the time I get home and I look in the mirror I’m sort of like, Oh, yeah, it’s died down. So I kind of feel like I’ve kind of learnt that. So when, there were times when I’d probably, you know, be quite worried. I’d hang out with my friends but necessarily I wouldn’t go to like, if there was like loads of people, or like a party. I wouldn’t avoid a party but, you know, like if there were loads of people I might think like, Oh, I don’t know if I wanna go and get nervous, but still go. But now I’ve learnt that by the time I get home it’s fine. So that means probably for most part of where I am it’s probably died down, it’s probably all right. So, yeah, I don’t really avoid stuff.

When you, when you were sort of getting nervous about parties, was it, what was it about that?

I don’t know. You just don’t wanna be like looking not your best. You gotta be looking fly. But if you’re not looking fly, it’s not good. So I don’t, I don’t know. You just, you just get nervous, you just get self-conscious about the fact that your face is covered in like red things, but you don’t really know why they’re there. But, you know, just I know that it dies down over time, so I don’t really worry about it any more.

I was really conscious of, sort of I was self-conscious but conscious of not wanting to be self-conscious. So I’d be quite, I wouldn’t try and hide it, cos I felt sort of, Everyone knows that my skin’s really bad. There’s no point in covering it up and making it worse. So I think that sort of gave off the impression that I wasn’t too self-conscious about it. But at the same time it like, it does, it does take up a lot of your thoughts and a lot of your time, just sort of constantly thinking, Oh, I wonder what people, are people looking at me? I remember walking down the street and being like, Oh, are people looking at me? Not wanting photos taken, things like that. So, yeah, there is a definite emotional side to it.

Would you ever avoid sort of events or going to certain places as a result of that sort of self-consciousness?

I don’t know if I’d go as far as avoiding things, but I def-, like events, but I’d avoid maybe certain people or people with cameras or I was, I remember being quite conscious of sort of where I’d sit in a room or where I’d go, cos obviously certain lights make it look a lot worse. I knew that when my skin was oily fluorescent lights would make it look really bad, but if I sat next to a window with natural light it looked better. So thing, little things like that. I hadn’t even realised that I thought about those things, but it does, it takes up a lot of your brain space, yeah.

I played sport, team sport at school until I was about 14 and then just like completely gave up, didn’t do anything. I don’t know if that was entirely, I don’t think that was acne related, it was just a sort of like classic, Teenage girls don’t play sport. But I started, yeah, it wasn’t so much to do with, yeah, I’ve sort of lost my train of thought. I just got distracted because I was thinking, I remember going swimming because we had to do swimming lessons at school and like the chlorine of the pool would often, if I’d had certain creams and stuff on my face that would have a kind of searing effect. Which, like that one wasn’t a kind of satisfying burning, that was, This is actually painful. So I was always quite self-conscious about that. And then obviously like you’ve got your towel with you and it might have like those bleach marks on it and everything. But that, like we on-, we didn’t have to do that very often, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. But I think, I sort of wish I’d carried on with sport through school because it, it really builds your confidence. It’s something I’ve got back into at uni and it’s, it’s just really nice to have a little sort of family for a couple of hours every week to just like run around with. And it doesn’t matter what you look like because everyone’s obviously like sweaty and muddy and gross anyway. So it doesn’t, it, like it doesn’t matter what your skin’s like. So I think that would have been a really positive thing to carry on with, but I just, I just didn’t.