In November last year, everything was amazing. I was recently engaged, had my engagement party, and was just generally pretty happy. I had put myself on a lovely moderation diet, consisting of the food I usually eat, with dairy, sugar, and fat being consumed in a moderate way. My weight was great, my skin was fantastic, and I felt pretty damn good about myself.

In December, that changed.

It became apparent to me that I would have to resign from my job, as they were getting a bad wrap in the media and it seemed as though not everything was right. On top of that, I was having arguments with friends and was feeling stressed out. I turned to dairy, sugar, and fat in my time of need, and things changed pretty dramatically.

My skin was terrible. From about the middle of December until the beginning of June, my skin was covered in cystic acne, which seemed to come out of nowhere. I was embarrassed, tried to cover it up, and remember crying a good few times about how hideous I felt.

In high school (because acne and high school go together like tea and biscuits) my skin was…okay. I didn’t have cystic acne, but I had the occasional “Oh my god, I don’t want to go to school today” zit. And when I had a pimple the size of a button on my forehead, I made the decision to get a fringe (along with the fact that I had ruined my eyebrows with tweezers at that age). But it was never THAT bad. Just the average teenager amount of acne.

What ensued from December until June was chaos. I had to teach myself to apply makeup differently to how I had before. Now it wasn’t just about making sure my skin looked even, but it was about covering bumps and scars and blood (from my incessant picking). And I had no clue what to do about it.

I went to several people about it. But not much seemed to work. I changed my diet, I gave up milk, I wore less makeup. Nothing.

The thing that really struck me was how others treated me. From the man who stared at me in Woolworths while my face was ablaze, to the relatives who I overheard whispering about how my skin “didn’t look so great”. My self-esteem was in tatters, and people weren’t really helping the situation. Sometimes I would brave the outside world without a bit of makeup on, only to have people look at me strangely (or was that just my imagination?). As I cried into my fiancé’s chest, calling myself ugly while still picking and scabbing my skin, I thought it would never go away. The pain the acne gave me (both on the inside and the outside) was horrible.

And now? Now, luckily, all that is left are the scars.

I’ll be writing about how it only took one month to rid my skin of cystic acne soon!