This may be entirely too much information, but the other night I noticed a fairly large pimple on my chin. As I popped it, I laughed and cringed at the same time while saying, “Did you see that, babe?”

It was gross , and I knew Emily would be impressed because she was weirdly fascinated with pimples.

Dr. Pimple Popper

I’ve mentioned before that Emily always enjoyed medical shows, but I don’t think I specifically called out her obsession with Dr. Pimple Popper and similar folks. For reasons I will never understand, Emily loved watching these people do their work or provide commentary on other people’s pimple-popping videos.

Some evenings, we’d both sit in bed together on our phones and take turns showing each other things. And, at least once a week, Emily’s videos included a series of pimple popping ones. I never fully understood the fascination (and I really didn’t understand how she could eat and watch them).

If they didn’t appear on TikTok, she’d find plenty of content on Reddit. I’m not sure what subreddits you have to follow for that kind of content, but Emily certainly found them.

Regardless, her reactions made it even better. She’d scream, “Ew!” while watching with morbid fascination. Sometimes she’d even predict when they were going to pop, which was equally entertaining.

Pimple Popping as Stress Relief

As you likely gathered from the intro to this post, I deal with acne. Unfortunately, it’s not just limited to my face (I wish it was). And while I initially worried this would gross Emily out, it didn’t. Instead, it interested her.

According to her, popping pimples provided stress relief. She said it forced her brain to focus on a single task, which lowered her anxiety levels. So, at least once a week, I became her version of a stress ball.

Of course, I’m a big baby, so I’d frequently squeal or whine. In my defense, she would use her nails and it hurt sometimes! (Didn’t stop her from making fun of me, though.)

I’ll be honest, I did worry that I was somehow feeding her OCD by letting her do it, but it didn’t seem like a compulsion (trust me, she had plenty of those for me to know what they looked like). And, minus the moments of pain, I enjoyed this strange form of quality time because we frequently had very interesting conversations as I sat or laid there and she attacked anything that looked like a zit or blackhead.

Such a Silly Thing to Miss

I feel like the fact that I miss Emily showing me pimple popping videos or popping pimples on me shows how mentally unwell I am. But, at the same time, I think it also just speaks to my love for her. I’d trade all of my free time or anything I own for an hour with Emily… Even if that hour involved her nails digging into the skin on my back over and over again.

However, you won’t find me in bed watching pimple popping videos — I only did that because of Emily.