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In Your Face

© Michele Hriciso

The title of this article used to describe me very well. It seemed like I was always in someone's face about something.

I was fussy from the day I was born, if you believe my mom. You couldn't turn your back on me for a second in a public place, because I'd be off talking to anyone who would talk back. In those days a kid could be unleashed and have a good chance of being returned to her rightful owner.

I always seemed to know what I wanted. I told my dad when I was three that I was going to be a journalist, and at that tender age I knew exactly what a journalist did. When I was five, my cousin and I put on a show called "Black Lake News" so we could tell everyone about everything that was going on at my grandparents' summer cottage. The audience - our parents, grandparents and baby brothers - already knew how the stories ended but they were still amazed at our accuracy.

While I was in school, I did things that got me on stage - orchestra, band, musicals, dance. I even sang with my dad's bluegrass band in my early teens. If it put me in someone's face, I'd do it. God help you if you dared me to do something that would embarrass a normal person. I'd do it to see if you got embarrassed, as long as it wasn't illegal.

Of course, back then I had a pretty face.

I've always been on the "chunky" side, but the face was all right. I figured if I could keep people looking at my face they'd stop thinking about the rest of me. For years it worked.

Two years ago I got psoriasis on my face. It changed my world.

I could deal with having psoriasis on my scalp. Nobody could see it. I could deal with it on my body; it wasn't that bad, and the people who saw it there didn't care because they liked me anyway or I was paying them to look at it.

Psoriasis on the face is a different matter entirely. All the research I have done indicates that it is relatively rare. But the vain side of me thinks it's the end of the world.

I had relatively clear skin as a teenager; sure, I had a few pimples here and there, but doesn't everyone? It was never an issue for me, because I could look at other kids and say, hey, even the most gorgeous people get zits sometimes. And zits eventually go away, just not as fast as you'd like.

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