Pimple Positivity: My Journey of Accepting Myself as Who I am

I'm going to have my period in a week which means I'll have a pimple breakout very soon which would last for about two weeks. After these weeks, before the scars are even healed properly, the same process would repeat itself. I've had pimples for almost six years now and from a girl who used to refrain from seeing her face in the mirror to someone who is now learning to go out and face the world with marks on her face, I think I'm growing by the day. Pimple positivity is the new norm and I have started to live by that.

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I still end up popping my pimples when they itch too much, but I am working on it. I've been given unsolicited advice from people around me to "cure" my skin - drink more water, wash your pillowcase, wash your face numerous times in a day, wear sunscreen when you go out and whatnot. Apparently, nothing seems to work. These pimples spy on my activity calendar and tend to make their way back to my face on the morning of any big day that I've been looking forward to. But now I am learning to accept my face as it is, "flawed" as some would like to say.

There are days when I feel like scrapping off my skin because of the irritation they cause. Many times, a breakout on the forehead causes severe headache and I can't concentrate on anything. But now this has become pretty much the part and parcel of my life. While growing up, the standards of beauty are fed to our brains and we start looking at everybody including ourselves with the same aesthetic lens. We strive to change how we look like just to abide by the same-for-all beauty checklist. Yes, that's what I like to call it, a checklist. Tick the boxes and check whether you are beautiful or not. Isn't that what we have been propagating for ages now?

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Makeup was never something I could do, so it was the filters that I used to hide the scars and blemishes on my face.

But over the past few months, I've been questioning myself on why do I need to hide them? What is the point in getting depressed over something that can't be changed? Why do I feel embarrassed when the bumps on my skin are at their peak? Why do I not have even a single picture of myself in pimples? The answer to these questions is the checklist again. It has been so well imprinted in our systems that unlearning would definitely take time. But one thing I'm sure of is the fact that I'm in this process and I'll definitely emerge as a more confident and accepting individual.

Now that I think about it, the way my face looks has changed my idea of beauty altogether. Beauty, I believe is not something that is black and white, it has gray areas. We're all different and the blemishes we call flaws and hide under the ambit of filters or makeup products are nothing but a part of us. Beauty is not a concept, it's a perspective, and the sooner we accept it the better we'll feel about the people around us and about ourselves too. Pimple positivity was my idea of acceptance and self-love, what is yours?

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Saavriti is an intern at SheThePeople.TV. The views expressed are the author's own.