Long post, so bear with me. I would appreciate any support or similar stories in the comments.
I was diagnosed with having rosacea at 9 years old. I never really knew what rosacea was, and I thought that I would go red easily and that's it. My mother has rosacea as well, mainly flushing and redness, but neither one of us knew the redness was caused from rosacea due to the derm being very unhelpful back then.
At 13/14 I reckon, I had a baseline of redness but it was nothing too concerning, more like pinkness to the cheeks. At the time, I figured it was my genes because of my mother's skin. It was also common for kids my age to have pink cheeks and such.
Pictures of me at 16, shows me with a much redder baseline and remember people always commenting on my red cheeks. This was when I noticed my cheeks were always very red, but I played a lot of football and believed it was me being exerted or sunburn. It kept worsening and my cheeks became very rosy at a baseline, which is when I began to get a little insecure about. Still thinking I had high coloring, I never did anything for it, but I did a ton of comments on it.
Fast forward to now, they are extremely red all the time and a and I absolutely can't stand it. After some research, I found out it was rosacea and told my mother who also started her treatment. Whilst she got most of her redness down, mine can't seem to fade at all. My flushing has lessened substantially, but it's the red cheeks I cannot deal with. I know it is not as big of a deal as other people's conditions, but this redness has been the bane of my existence for some time. Would really prefer if it was a light redness like it was back then, because now I just look silly.