Hey guys! I'm going to do something a little different today. In my first post I mentioned how terrible my skin used to be. Here's a little bit more on that.
This is totally going to sound like proactiv paid me to write a commercial for them, but I swear they didn't! Anyway.
When I was in high school, my skin was awesome. I had a very occasional pimple, but it was honestly so rare. I thought I was in the clear! Then, when I was 18 or 19, my skin failed me. My cheeks and nose got really red and angry little bumps started popping up EVERYWHERE on my face. Honestly, everywhere, though it was by far the worst on my chin. At first I thought that it would just go away, but they were determined to stay. For years.
Of course, this didn't help my self-confidence. I hid from pictures. Actually, I wanted to find one to show you guys how bad it was, but I honestly can't. I tried to position my hair strategically so no one could see the worst of it. One time I even sat down and circled every blemish with eyeliner and my face ended up mostly black. Not only did I hate looking in the mirror, but these angry red bumps were painful!
Let me tell you, I tried everything. For years I experimented with every toner, every cleanser, every calming cleanser, every exfoliating cleanser, every moisturizer. I spent a lot of money trying to find something that worked, but nothing did. Disheartened, I eventually went to my doctor and asked for help. I was prescribed a cream that didn't work, and then a gel that actually sort of did! I cleared up some, but had weird patches of skin peeling off my cheeks that would then start to weep. At one point I stopped using the gel for a week. When I started again, my eyes got really itchy and were swollen shut when I woke up the next morning! I guessed that I had developed some sort of allergy to something in it, so I stopped using it altogether. By this point I had pretty much accepted that I was going to have crappy skin for a long, long time.
Of course, I had seen the proactiv commercials on TV, but many years and a long string of failures had made me very skeptical and I just brushed it off assuming it wouldn't work for me. By this point, I was well out of university. That's right, I had been suffering for five years at least. I'm not sure what made me change my mind. Maybe I just decided that just one more attempt wouldn't hurt, or that another $75 was a drop in the pool compared to what I had spent before. For whatever reason, I tried it. I got the starter kit and gave it a go.
Wouldn't you know it, I had another allergic reaction (it must be benzoyl peroxide). Instead of not using it anymore like any sane person should do, I told my body to shut up and get used to it. After only a few days of following the steps (cleanser, toner, cream), my skin looked a lot lot lot better and the swelling had gone down. The only problem was that it was dry. Like, skin-flaking-off-my-face dry. I decided to see if I could get away with just using the cleanser, and sho'nuff I could!
Now, I won't claim that my skin is perfect. I get tiny little whitehead zits sometimes, like when I put sunscreen on my face or before that awful time of the month. I have also stopped using proactiv for the past couple of months to see what my skin would do, and it's fine. But guys, this stuff works. Trust me. After many tears and many dollars down the drain, I haven't had a single want or need when it comes to my skin after using proactiv. I am a much happier and confident person because of this. If you are anything like I was and unsure about giving it a shot, you absolutely should.
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