Skin

I just need to get this off my chest before I begin the ramble: Urgh. I've been chucked to the waiting list.

This is going to sound completely incredulous, and it might just come off as a lie. But here goes: At some point in my life, my skin was actually perfect. Smooth and clear, I'd dare say flawless. I never had to worry if globules of god-knows-what would clog it up from within, inflaming it, producing godawful bumps, and leaving unsightly scars.

Oh how things have changed. I've lost count of the amount of money I've spent on cleansers, lotions and basically any other form of topical medication. I've bought, literally, into every single claim there was on the market, all in the hope of acquiring good, or at least, better skin, than my horribly pockmarked pizza face. More often than not those things never worked. And though popping pills improved the situation a little, the dire consequences it rendered onto something else, has put me off any more tablets. And later, with blotters as my stable companion (I'd break into hysterics when I ran out of them), I discovered the world of make-up. I layer coat after coat on my face, trying to replicate the perfect canvas I see on so many other people. And needless to say, things got worse.

Now, before you start droning on, with your mockingly sweet voice that spills from that mouth perched on a canvas of perfect skin, that I should 'drink a lot of water and don't eat so much chilli', maybe you should actually bother to notice that I actually swig down more than you do. And don't you remember the time I stopped chilli for so long? It did not help either.

'Superficial'. 'Stop being so self-conscious'. 'Why do you care so much about your looks'. 'Looks don't matter'.

I don't know if you intend it or not, but saying 'looks don't matter' to pizza face certainly comes across as horribly sarcastic considering you have never had a spot of imperfection on your face before.

All the probable solutions to this entail hefty price tags. And so you say, for someone of my condition (read: pizza face), you cannot help but to spend on these things. You talk as if I can crap money.

I have no choice but to acclimatize myself to meeting the world as PIZZAFACE.

I'm actually starting to like the sound of 'pizzaface'. I can picture a Marvelesque heroine who slays villians with her pockmarked face.