You stretch your arm out in the darkness and silence the buzzing alarm…
its 6:30 am.
You take a deep breath as you stretch under your blanket and you can hear the sound of your neighbor’s vehicle already motoring off to work. After you bring yourself to a sitting position and place your feet on the floor, you decide its cold so you slide into your slippers.
Now you feel better.
You groggily shuffle your feet to the bathroom and flick the light on, you wince at the wattage of the bulb. You turn the water on at the sink and let it run over your fingertips until it is the perfect temperature. You splash water on your face and squeeze some cleanser into the palm of your hand. You begin to wash and you feel the usual soreness, the pain of even touching your face that comes with the burden of acne.
You rinse and pat dry. Then you lean in towards the mirror. You turn to the left, then the right. Four new pimples, just over night! You’re not surprised though, after all you have been dealing with this since the sixth grade. You used to get teased on a daily basis, all the way through high school. Sure, you had friends but even they lovingly picked on you. Now that you are an adult you feel like everyone notices your acne before they notice you. You feel ashamed and embarrassed so you spend a lot of time styling your hair to cover your face and you rarely look people in the eye.
Your mother used to tell you not to get worked up over it, that you would grow out of it one day…but that day never came.
At times you’ve lost hope of ever having beautiful skin.
You make your way to the kitchen and pour yourself some coffee. You sit next to the open window at the table. This is your quite moment before waking up the kids. You feel better. As you let the scent of your drink fill the air as you look outside to the lawn. The sprinklers have kicked on; it must be 7:00 am now.
As you sip on your coffee, you notice out of the corner of your eye, a gift certificate. It is sitting in the middle of the table, under a stack of bills and junk mail, it is for a free skincare treatment, suddenly you are excited. You remember when your best friend gave it to you so you could see a skincare specialist at the Avalon Clinic. At the time you figured, “Nothing else has worked for my skin, why should this?” Then you pause for a moment…
Now you are thinking of how your best friend steps into a room without hiding her face, without averting her eyes to the floor, and you realize how long you’ve waited to have that for yourself. She has had chemical peels and microdermabrasions at the Avalon Clinic; she also uses their products to maintain her skin in between treatments…and her skin is radiant!
You feel better as you reach for the phone, then you pause and smile at yourself because you know you are about to take the first step towards changing your life, your self esteem and your skin.
You groggily shuffle your feet to the bathroom and flick the light on, you wince at the wattage of the bulb. You turn the water on at the sink and let it run over your fingertips until it is the perfect temperature. You splash water on your face and squeeze some cleanser into the palm of your hand. You begin to wash and you feel the usual soreness, the pain of even touching your face that comes with the burden of acne.
You rinse and pat dry. Then you lean in towards the mirror. You turn to the left, then the right. Four new pimples, just over night! You’re not surprised though, after all you have been dealing with this since the sixth grade. You used to get teased on a daily basis, all the way through high school. Sure, you had friends but even they lovingly picked on you. Now that you are an adult you feel like everyone notices your acne before they notice you. You feel ashamed and embarrassed so you spend a lot of time styling your hair to cover your face and you rarely look people in the eye.
Your mother used to tell you not to get worked up over it, that you would grow out of it one day…but that day never came.
At times you’ve lost hope of ever having beautiful skin.
You make your way to the kitchen and pour yourself some coffee. You sit next to the open window at the table. This is your quite moment before waking up the kids. You feel better. As you let the scent of your drink fill the air as you look outside to the lawn. The sprinklers have kicked on; it must be 7:00 am now.
As you sip on your coffee, you notice out of the corner of your eye, a gift certificate. It is sitting in the middle of the table, under a stack of bills and junk mail, it is for a free skincare treatment, suddenly you are excited. You remember when your best friend gave it to you so you could see a skincare specialist at the Avalon Clinic. At the time you figured, “Nothing else has worked for my skin, why should this?” Then you pause for a moment…
Now you are thinking of how your best friend steps into a room without hiding her face, without averting her eyes to the floor, and you realize how long you’ve waited to have that for yourself. She has had chemical peels and microdermabrasions at the Avalon Clinic; she also uses their products to maintain her skin in between treatments…and her skin is radiant!
You feel better as you reach for the phone, then you pause and smile at yourself because you know you are about to take the first step towards changing your life, your self esteem and your skin.
