I hate my face
My face looks hideous, and I’ve known it since I was young. Every crush I had would let me know I was ugly. From a young age, people always asked me why I look chinese. In pre-school, kids would make fun of it. I always felt insecure about my eyes. That is, until my eyebrows grew to the signature thickness we all know and I hate. I guess it’s genetics, and there’s nothing I can do. My childhood best friend was prettier than me, and all the girls had crushes on him. From then on, at young age, I learned that I would have to be everything except pretty. I would have to be the most talkative, charming, funny and outgoing person, because my face was neither of them. When puberty came, the pimples followed. I remember my first zit panic, frantically running back and forth from mirror to bedroom. Squeezing, scratching, the blood, the bruise, the bump, the acne, the ingrown hair. The plucking of the eyebrows, the two desperate attempts at getting my unibrow layered (to no avail), the disgusting mole on my forehead that protrudes a bundle of hairs at any given time (If I pluck it, shit gets worse, like the Chinese saying goes).
And now, more than a decade later, my face has not changed. The pimples remain, my tendency to scratch and squeeze has not diminished. The back of my ears is where I most savagely deface myself. It’s been years since I last cut myself, but it’s been minutes since I scratched a pimple that will only grow larger in the coming days. It is likely that I dubs consciously punish myself by sabotaging my visage day in, day out. It’s like I keep myself from feeling good about the man in the mirror.
I mostly torture my face when engaged in my readings, or work. It’s likely the least painful way to keep myself from grief. You’d think at some point, in your mid20s, your face would clear up, and so would you. But it never will, and at this point, I’ve accepted that the drugs I do, the damage I produce unto myself, the lack of sleep, excessive caloric intake and many mental quirks will keep me looking like a meth addict well into adulthood.
Oh how I wish they just called me chinese now. My eyes are actually my chillest feature. I sometimes regret not getting braces. My teeth are all fucked up, and they sometimes hurt. I never properly learned to shave, nobody ever taught me. The only time I was shown how to do it is when I first shaved. I was 13 and utterly embarrassed by my moustache, who was sizeable, but gross. I grabbed a machine from the bathroom and basically tried to remove my moustache with the low trim function. I looked ridiculous, my upper lip was completely red. When I showed up to my mother’s shop, she was angry to see my red upper lip.
“What happened?” she asked. I explained. When we got home for lunch, she grabbed a blade and finished the job on my face. I never learned what I did wrong, I never learned the difference between blades and automatic shaving machines. To this day, I feel like I’m terrible at grooming, and as much as I’d like to blame my parents for never making me too insecure about the way I looked, I know I’m the one to blame. My sloppy, stoner-like attitude thinks it can manage, but it can’t. And of course, when my friend first dropped the balding allegations on me when I was 18, I instantly grew my hair out of panic. That’s why I have long hair. Also to hide my face, to distract from the brows below. And no amount of body positivity campaigns will convince me that I’m beautiful. I’ve read too many things on 4chan; my chin type, body build, genetics all suggest that I’m unlovable. My dating app experience confirms this. Personality is hard to picture, and harder yet to maintain. If I was pretty I’d be even dumber than I am. But alas, I content myself with knowing that, even in loathing myself in text, I’ll never be as pretty on the inside as I am ugly on the outside. I hate my face and everything it hides.
