Sian Maher
Everyone is well acquainted with the saying ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’, right? I hear that saying on a regular basis. My questions are ‘but what if I don’t like lemonade?’, ‘what if life gives me oranges and not lemons? What do I do then? Make orange juice? Or do I still attempt to make lemonade despite the lack of lemons?‘ and finally, ‘What if I don’t fancy lemonade? Don’t I have the choice to just wear a sour face?’.
Personally, I can’t say that I’ve had much experience with life giving me lemons; one thing it did decide to bestow on me, however, was actually pepperoni and I’ll tell you something: it was awfully laborious attempting to make lemonade without my lemons but that did not inhibit me. I am not a great fan of lemonade and quite frankly I’d happily pick a Fanta Orange or a wee ‘Irish Stew’ over it any day. However, I settled with the simple fact that I’d stick to the rule book.
Life gave me pepperoni in the summer of 2010- a whole six years ago- and accompanied with the pepperoni came my pizza face: red, blotchy and acne veiled (not a pretty sight). I tried everything I could to get rid of my pizza face but no pineapple, no ham or no mushroom could fix it. My mum and dad spent great amounts of ‘dough’ in attempting to get rid of it but nothing ever worked. Even now, time has passed and my lemonade recipe has yet to be perfected. Sometimes you just don’t feel up to the pepperoni topping and so you peel it off and leave it to the side and when the pizza is gobbled up there is always a few pieces of pepperoni and cheese filled crusts remaining. I mean there have been times in which my acne has pushed my confidence and I have succumbed to wearing a sour face.
For years I toyed with the idea that butterflies were perceived as beautiful creatures; creatures of elegance and allure, yet up close they were as ugly as a decayed calzone. And with this image in mind , I conveyed a confident and outgoing persona and I almost, shall I say, ‘owned’ my spottiness. On the many tear driven nights at home secluded in the shell of my bedroom, my mum would repeat the age old saying ‘you look beautiful’ or that the criticism that I was the recipient of ‘was spawn of a jealous nature’. Again and again she spoke words of which I believed were stereotypical of a mother. I met her with denial. Acne is a great problem within teenagers: with around 80% of 11 to 30 year olds suffering from acne. However, don’t worry! If I can make lemonade out of pepperoni , you can too.
