It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,21
if I woke up on the day of the camp with a huge, disfiguring pimple between my eyes? This was not a theoretical concern, but rather something that had happened to me already several times in my life. I have had a pimple so big that it looked like a third eye. I have had pimples so big they should be featured on those awful, voyeuristic, disgusting pimple-popping videos.
It’s hard to explain how bad skin makes me simply give up on things, but it does. I can go from being excited to feeling numb, empty and resigned in one minute flat. I don’t ever want anything badly enough that I’d still go with a giant disfiguring pimple on my face.
The heavy-duty acne medication should have given me confidence, but I didn’t trust it. My body could always, always betray me. That’s what I knew. And even if it was okay now, it would betray me in the future. Even my dermatologist said that—if the acne was caused by my unbalanced hormones and problematic ovaries (official name: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), as we suspected it was, then it would probably come back. Maybe a year after I stop the medication, maybe sooner, maybe longer. My skin was a ticking time bomb, poised to explode in the most public way whenever I let down my guard. My GP said if I go off the pill in the future then, as well as a return of acne, I should watch for symptoms like a disappearing period, thinning head hair, increased facial hair, weight gain and general depression. That’s a fun checklist. Also, by the way, this was a condition that would continue for a lifetime.
It wasn’t just my skin and hormonal stuff though. Meeting new people was hard and I hated it.
But Mum didn’t let up. She was so scared of me missing this opportunity, the fear became palpable in our house. The signed parental consent forms were stuck to the front of our refrigerator for days, and I kept catching Dad looking at them with a worried expression. Mum surrounded them with Post-it notes, on which she drew arrows and wrote ‘Don’t forget!!’ and ‘The deadline is Friday!!’ and ‘Do it!!’
They were going to be so disappointed in me if I didn’t go.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I took the forms to school and handed them in. I was going. Definitely, definitely going. Mum danced me around the kitchen in delight.
I made several trips to the dermatologist to beg him to fix the shiny red patch on my face, to no avail. (‘Unfortunately, Natalie, this is just something you’ll have to endure while you’re on the medication,’ he had said, with a tone that implied he thought I had a limited capacity for enduring things.) I packed and repacked my bags. I chewed my fingernails. I had nightmares. I thought about changing my name. (Surely if I introduced myself as Roxy then I would magically have the confidence of a girl called Roxy.)
And I went to the camp.
Mum and Dad drove me there. It was a three-hour trip and Mum kept up a relentlessly cheerful commentary for practically every minute, as if a moment of silence would allow me to change my mind. She kept telling me I was going to have a great time, which made me want to have a terrible time just to spite her.
At the camp sign-in, I stood in line behind a boy. Mum nudged me, and I refused to look at her, because I knew she would do something unsubtle like wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. She’d done that once before when a bunch of boys were standing near us at the cinema, and I had to go into the bathroom and deep breathe in the cubicle to recover from my embarrassment.
The boy in the camp line (spoiler—it was Zach) turned around and smiled kind of goofily at me as he walked past. He was tall and skinny with messy dark curls and the friendliest face I have maybe ever seen on another human being. I quickly glanced away and didn’t smile back, which is my standard response whenever anyone looks at me, but in my mind I was smiling back, and it felt like a good sign.
I was desperate for Mum and Dad to leave, but the minute I saw their car pulling away, I was hit with a wave of nausea and had to stop myself from running after them screaming, ‘Come back, come