I felt acne ruined me. Now…See Link to The Guardian

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/28/how-i-found-light-at-the-end-of-the-very-dark-tunnel-that-acne-plunged-me-into

I understood this article , although my difficulties were reversed. The author had extreme acne and (apparently) parental support. I suppose I had moderate acne but no social support. The people who adopted me lived that the beauty people remarked about when I was a child, was marred.

The acne messages were repeated often and loudly:

She USED to be cute.

What happened to your face? [smirk]

Look how ugly you are! [while thrusting a mirror under my nose]

My lasting nickname made use of the fact that dark skin forms even darker marks when it is injured and also while healing. The marks can last for months. Hence, I became “spotty faced leopard.” Now that I think about it, the delight the the people who adopted me had in my misfortune was the greatest factor in them becoming “the people who adopted me” instead of parents. I held out hope that there was some other family for me (yes and no) I was so grateful not to be of their bloodline. The search for my birth mother gave me purpose I might not have had and I was spurred by the void left when I finalized the rejection others began. I was a de facto orphan on a mission. More on that later.

I am one of the minority of people who never enjoyed clear skin, not even now. I have never thought of acne as benefitting my character at all. Today, I learned something new. This linked article explained the Japanese concept that when something is broken, and repaired but still scarred, those scars make the thing all the more useful. The idea is meant to be applied literally, to damaged pottery, and figuratively, to damaged lives.

Epiphany

The whole purpose of my site, the reason why I don’t wear a Harvard ring and shut up about the homelessness and addiction and sex work is that those things have left visible scars. The scars cause people to ask questions like I heard last week: what’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you married and successful and in a big house?

My Life Scars

The scars of my life show, clearly. My continuous mission is to find the beauty in the scars, to see my life as something other than a story of what might have been. I have been criticized for not giving people THE ANSWER to addiction and other woes. I don’t have it. I can only share my experiences and instead of doing my usual and providing the interpretation, I let the reader figure out how to use my life to help himself.

Of all the words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: it might have been. –Shakespeare

If no, when I write well, my issues will be my good fortune and not just challenges to overcome. I will one day say, I am glad it worked out this way. And I will mean it about the acne too. Not there yet. But after this article, I see the path.