Insecurity is one of the most annoying things to live with. It rarely arrives as a loud crisis. It slips
in quietly, like a draft under a door, and settles in the corners of ordinary days.
For me, it started with my skin. I battled terrible acne and the dark spots it left behind for the
whole of my teenage years. My face was a map of flare ups and fade marks, and I learned early
how to read a room for mirrors. I angled my face when I spoke. I found the good side. I mastered
the casual hand on cheek pose that wasn’t casual at all. Some mornings I felt so low I wanted to
cancel the day before it began. I tried every home made remedy I could get my hands on.
Mixtures that promised miracles and delivered rashes. Group photos felt like exposure.
Compliments felt like pity. I wasn’t just dealing with pimples. I was negotiating my worth in my
head, every single morning.
So when I noticed a single strand of hair on my chin, it felt like a betrayal. I’d already fought one
battle on my face for years. I was not about to add facial hair to it. The strand was thin, almost
invisible, but it may as well have been a headline. I stared at it in the small mirror we kept on the
wall, and my mind did what minds do when they’re young and unpractised. It leapt. Why was
this happening to me. Was I different. Was something wrong with me.
Then it became two strands. Then three. Not much. Nothing anyone would notice unless they
were inches from my face. But enough to make me uncomfortable in my own skin. I carried that
discomfort to class. To every office I had to be in. I kept my hand near my jaw as if I were
thinking, just to hide a patch of skin no bigger than a grain of rice.
One morning I was getting dressed for an early class. My roommate was asleep on the bed
beside the wardrobe, her breathing slow and even. I ran my hand over my chin and felt the tiny
bristle. Without thinking, I reached for a shaving stick. I moved like someone defusing a bomb.
Eyes flicking to her face. There was no way I was stepping outside with those strands. It didn’t
feel normal to me, and after years of acne, normal felt like the one thing I was owed.
Just as I lifted the blade, she stirred. Her head rose from the pillow. Her eyes blinked open. I
froze, the shaving stick hovering in the air like an accusation. My heart sank to my stomach. I felt
the hot rush of a child caught with her hand in the biscuit tin. I wasn’t sure if she’d seen what I
was about to do. She acted unbothered. Asked if I had class. I nodded, burning with shame, and
rotated into a lie that felt safer than the truth. I pretended I was shaping my brow. Truth is I
didn’t even know how to. She rolled over and went back to sleep. She never made a fuss.
To this day I wonder which story is true. Did she see and simply not care. Or did she notice my
discomfort and choose to spare me. Either way, I laugh at myself now, but the moment stayed
with me. It taught me something small and sturdy. The things we call shame often matter far less
to other people than they do to us.
Until you overcome the fear of what will people think, you live in a constant, low grade panic.
You stall. You shrink. You don’t move. Fear narrows your world to the size of other people’s
imagined opinions. It keeps you rehearsing conversations that will never happen and apologising
for things that were never wrong.
Years later, scrolling through social media, I saw someone I knew trimming the hair on her chin
like it was the most normal thing in the world. The younger me wanted to shout, I was ashamed
of this, and hoped she’d say, It’s okay. Then the algorithm, in its strange mercy, showed me more
women. Some dealing with higher androgen levels who shave regularly, while others leave it and
carry on with their day. They weren’t apologising for nature. They couldn’t be shamed for
something they didn’t choose.
That hit me. We’re not just ashamed. We’re afraid. What will people say. What will my friends
think. What if they laugh. What if they whisper. What if they stop seeing me the way I want to be
seen. So many lives run on panic mode, stuck, because of other people’s imagined verdicts.
I’m not saying consideration doesn’t matter. One of the kindest forms of love is asking, How
would this make someone feel. If it were me, how would I feel. Empathy is a virtue. But
consideration is not the same as surrender. I’ve watched people abandon dreams because
someone else didn’t clap. I’ve seen talent dim itself to keep the room comfortable. The truth is
simple and freeing. People are entitled to their opinions and you are entitled to your life.
Nobody knew I’d taken a few hairs off my chin that morning. Nobody knew I’d wrestled with a
wave of panic before class. And I wonder what you’ve wrestled with, in silence, in bathrooms
and bedrooms, in the few minutes before you step out into the world. I wonder how much effort
people put in just to look presentable, and how little of that effort anyone else ever sees.
It may not only be the chin hairs, or only the acne. You may have wanted curves in places you
didn’t have them and worried about features you couldn’t edit. Your nose may have felt too
pointed. Your frame felt too slight. You were convinced you would always look like a straight line
in clothes, that no fabric would ever fall the way it did on other girls.
Back then, shopping was a quiet humiliation. I’d try on trousers that would never grip at the
waist and pooled at the ankles. Skirts slid down or sat wrong. I became a regular at the tailor’s
stall, constantly resizing, taking in sides, pinning, pleading. Can you bring this in just here. And
here. And maybe a little here too. My waist was so small it made everything else hang wrong.
People complimented it. You’re so slim. I wish I had your waist. But I dreaded it. I felt out of
proportion with myself, as if my body had been sketched quickly and left unfinished.
Time did what panic couldn’t. As I grew into adulthood, my body filled out a little. Not
dramatically, not all at once. Just enough. Hips softened. My waist was still small, but the rest of
me caught up in small, merciful ways. My nose is still my nose, and I’ve stopped negotiating with
it. The change wasn’t a makeover. It was a settling. It taught me that some things only need
patience. I didn’t need fixing. I needed time.
I also needed language. I needed to be able to say, This is my body, and it’s not a problem to be
solved. I needed to understand that beauty is not a single shape, and that confidence is not a
dress size. Some days I still catch myself checking my chin in the mirror before I leave the house.
Some days I still turn sideways to see how a skirt falls. But now I can name what I’m doing, and
naming it takes away some of its power.
Here’s what I wish I could tell the girl hovering by the wardrobe with a shaving stick, the same
girl who stared at her acne in a cracked mirror and felt the day drain out of her. You’re not
strange, you’re early. Your body is still writing its sentences. You don’t owe the world an
explanation for the way nature shows up on you. Shave or don’t. Resize the skirt or don’t. Treat
the acne or don’t. Wear the body you have while it’s still becoming. The fear will tell you
everyone is watching. Most people are thinking about themselves.
Stop living in that low grade panic, editing yourself before you even step outside. Let me say it
plainly. You are allowed to take up space as you are. You are allowed to be seen in process. You
are allowed to stop apologising for the normal things that happen on human skin.
I still remember that morning in detail. The pale light through the louvers, the soft shuffle of my
roommate turning in her sleep, the cold little click of the shaving stick cap. I remember the heat
in my cheeks when she looked up, the ridiculous, earnest lie about my brow. And I remember the
quiet after, when she went back to sleep and the world didn’t end. Nothing exploded. No one
pointed. I got dressed and went to class. Life continued, ordinary and merciful.
That’s the whole secret, I think. The things we fear most loudly are often the things no one else
notices. And the things that do matter, kindness, courage, the way you keep showing up, are the
things you build in private, one small, unapologetic decision at a time.
So if you have acne, treat it or don’t. If you have a chin hair, take care of it or don’t. If your waist
is small, tailor the skirt or let it be. If your nose is pointed, let it point you forward. You don’t
have to be finished to be worthy. You don’t have to be flawless to be free.