Actually it’s a series of pimples, one between my eyes, a couple lurking right under my bottom lip, and one leviathan looming right next to my nose. I looked in the mirror this morning and that thing practically winked at me.  It was so startling it took me straight back to being fourteen again, and my very first pimple.  (Okay, that’s creeping closer to fifteen years, if you’re counting.) I didn’t think the first one was that bad; in fact, I thought I was the only one who noticed.  But then my dad made fun of my entry into adolescence and suddenly the thing felt like the size of a planet.  So I popped it.  Being untutored in such matters, it was the only time I got a scar from acne.  I don’t think anyone else notices it now, but I know it’s there. And the reason for this sudden congregation of unwelcome facial guests?  I’m stressed out.  This always makes me feel about fourteen: ill-prepared for the challenges ahead, awkward, coated in crippling embarrassment about things that are largely out of my control or aren’t that important.  An updated collection of acne, it must be said, is not really helping. I have one important tool now, though, that I lacked at fourteen: a sense of perspective.  When you’re fourteen, you feel everything with unshielded intensity.  Even one tiny blemish is a crisis requiring a UN summit meeting.  All those problems now seem so small, so insignificant, so–cozy, even. When those fourteen-y feelings descend I like to remind myself that, in time, whatever Crisis with a Capital C I am facing at the moment is going to look just as puny.  So why not start to look at it that way now? A tip for taking off ten years?  I’d rather keep them, thanks.  I hope I always feel the same. originally posted on Skirt.com