In a tiny apartment above a Bodega just outside Montreal, I lay on a leather bed while a woman I had met a mere five minutes before pressed down on a spot just below my rib with her thumb. I sucked in a sharp breath, surprised by the pain it invoked. She nodded understandingly. 

“Alright there it is. Just as I suspected. It’s your liver.” 

“My liver?” 

“Your liver.” 

It had been many things. The dermatologist on the Upper-West-Side I went to as a freshman said it was my dry skin and prescribed me medication that would take “only” six months to clear up my acne. The dermatologist I went to on the Upper East Side seven months later informed me that my Upper West Side dermatologist was an absolute idiot and that the medication I had been taking was, in fact, making my awful skin even more awful. Oh joy! Upper-East-Side dermatologist had new and fancy equipment that boasted an algorithmic ability to solve any and all skin issues. I soon learned that this was just code for “I can tell you how terrible your face looks with science and graphs! And guess what, it’s even more terrible than you had originally anticipated!” After being insulted by a computer program for about forty five minutes, I was eventually prescribed three new medications that would take “just” three months to start working. 

I walked into the CVS on 70th street with a skip in my step. Though my face was significantly redder than it was a few months ago, I was convinced that my problems would soon be solved. This is it. This will work. Second time’s the charm.  Images of smooth-skinned models standing in direct sunlight without a spot in sight played like a celebratory montage in my head as the cashier rang me up. Though I was two-hundred and fifty dollars poorer (shout-out to my unsupportive insurance company), I was hopeful. 

In hindsight, perhaps naive is a better word. After nine painful weeks of trying to make it work, I concluded that myself and the Soolantra, epiduo forte, and antibiotics were simply not compatible. I had developed an allergic reaction to the medications, trust issues towards dermatologists, and commitment issues towards acne medicine. Jaded and raw-skinned, I figured it would be best for all of us to part amicably now to save ourselves an inevitable future of heartache and rosacea. 

But I wasn’t done. The days of blindly accepting any and all pills given to me by the fancy people in lab coats were over. I was going to clear my skin up, and I was going to do it myself. Enter Canadian Chinese medicine doctor! Rather than prescribing pills, I was given disgusting herbal teas that tasted like chicken stock and instructed to cut out dairy, sugar, caffeine, chocolate, and fried-foods from my diet. (i.e my entire diet.) As I lay on her makeshift recliner, poked and prodded by needles and fingers and many, many accusatory questions about my troubling lifestyle (“What do you mean you eat snickerdoodles for breakfast? What do you mean you sleep five hours a night? How can you live like this?!”) I briefly recognized how absolutely ridiculous this undertaking was. Cumin will not cure your acne, Simone. Nevertheless, I banished the little voice to the back corner of my mind for a time out and bought some $14 vegan cashew cheese on the drive home. 

So did it work? As I write this paper, it’s been a year and a half of depriving myself of mac and cheese and chocolate lava cake and I’m still waiting to wake up one morning with perfect skin. I find myself getting irrationally angry every time someone gives me their two cents about some life changing face wash because it’s just not that simple. At this point, I’m so blinded by my desperation that I’ve thoroughly convinced myself that the tiny bite of creamy butternut squash soup I ate a month ago is the sole reason for my skin problems. Today, I still brew my disgusting tea, I still search for sugar alternatives to quell my sweet tooth, I still have to summon nun-like levels of self control every time I see an ice cream truck. And frankly, my skin is not much better now than when I started this endeavor. Though I’m well aware my chinese medicine solution sounds (and most likely is) absolutely insane, I don’t think I can stop now. I would rather be trying, waiting for clear skin than accepting defeat and giving up on my dream of throwing out my concealer.