How skincare saved my life

I don’t really know how to start this. I have struggled with depression most of my life. I am the type of person that would rather talk down about myself than ever raise myself up. It’s my natural instinct.

When I went to college, I started falling harder into my depression. I ended up changing schools, which only made things worse. When I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, I started cutting. I broke up with my long distance boyfriend and started thinking of suicide. Even after meeting Austin (my current boyfriend and best friend) I still couldn’t help but fall into large periods of depression. I could barely get out of bed and ended up gaining over 50 pounds in a year.

It wasn’t until I started looking for a way to heal my acne that I found that skincare could be more that just washing your face. For me, my skincare ritual each night is as much about self care as it is about just cleaning my skin. The act of spending 10 minutes on myself every night in a positive way instead of tearing myself down changed my entire view on myself. I’m not sure ow to really explain this, but such a small about of time being used in a positive way made me actually start to like myself. It lifted my self worth. 

I know this my not make sense to most people, but when you spend your entire life being torn down by others, you start to get it in your head that they are right. Those 10 minutes a day give me a chance to really look at myself and realize that they’re wrong. I will probably always deal with depression in some form or fashion. But since discovering my love for skincare, I have also discovered a love for myself. I am healing. As weird as it may sound, skincare did that.