The one constant in my journey to clear skin has been the inconsistency of my progress. Rarely do my worst skin days correspond with any traceable changes—in products or habits or seasons, to name a few—and the same is true of the times when my skin is at its clearest. Facialists said it could be hormonal imbalances (it wasn’t), friends said it was just inflammation (technically true; also unhelpful), the internet told me it was everything (the same as telling me it was nothing). The most helpful advice was from my childhood dermatologist, who said I have acne-prone skin, and, as such, will have acne.
This advice spared me from some nonsense: falling for questionable BeautyTok hacks, splurging on exorbitant serums, hyper-fixating on every breakout. But I’d been playing pimple Whac-A-Mole for almost half my life, and was beginning to feel like the lone adult in an arcade full of kids. When acne is largely regarded as an adolescent problem, it makes sense that it's clinically treated that way, too. I yearned for a one-time fix-all; to be held by the hand and escorted out of the arcade for good.
