The skin that encases my body is not only imperfect: it is utterly fucked.
Its imperfections have played a leading role in sculpting my thoughts and feelings about myself and body image throughout most of my life. It has been the leading source of discomfort in an ultimate battle for control. Overall, it has contributed to more than I wish to give it credit for.
My mom often regales with me accounts of my skin issues from those early years I can’t recall: rashes and hives, reactions to fragrances, dyes, and foods, as well as cradle cap – a condition in babies caused by the overproduction of sebum, which produces yellowish scales and flakes on top of the head. A taste of what I would be living with further down the road. As I grew, I became resilient. In my younger years it seemed I was an invincible, tough little thing. My playtimes were spent outside, the bottoms of my feet became callused, my skin was brown from the sun, and nothing mattered. I was plagued by few conditions, but it was short-lived.
Painful cystic acne spread itself all over my face, neck, shoulders, chest, and back when I went through puberty at age 11. I shot up tall and chubby, with greasy, oily skin and hair. I sprouted tits. I got my period. All of this rapid change happened within the span of what I estimate to be one year. I was teased about my skin relentlessly. I was teased about a lot of things. For the most part, I’ve pushed those experiences behind a wall in my mind and don’t really allow them to come out until I feel like dealing with them.
Acne has turned out to be only one of many straws I’ve drawn from the pile of chronically fucked up skin conditions, though it has diminished significantly from its pimply prepubescent beginnings. From the moment it all started, it didn’t stop – and still, the hits just keep on coming.
Seborrheic dermatitis (basically extreme dandruff that doesn’t always restrict itself to my scalp) is a sleeping tiger–flaring up and receding at times, but ever-present. The same applies to my chronic urticaria, or hives, that come on and leave as they please without any proper trigger. I used to think it was a temperature-based reaction, then I thought it was pressure, sunlight, or sweat…now I’m ready to believe it could be anything.
On a daily basis my skin is delicate and sore, speckled with blemishes, scabs, wheals, and welts. My head and face produce sebum at alarming rates. My scalp, neck, forehead, hairline, and ears have been flaking more than ever as my seborrhea flared up rather suddenly and has not ceased for a solid three months. I could attribute its arrival to mounting life stressors goading my anxiety disorder, or maybe the shift in weather from spring to summer–but I’ve given up trying to decipher the triggers. The hives are more elusive. Sometimes if I put pressure on my skin in certain ways, it can produce welts. A little scuffle with my cat in the morning means her tiny scratches on my arms will inflate with puffy redness by the time I get to work.
If I accidentally pop an aspirin or a tablet of ibuprofen, my entire body is sure to break out. Acetaminophen only causes an outbreak about half the time, which I’ve never understood. A day spent outside in the sunshine might mean a flare-up hours later. A hard work-out or a particularly active afternoon will end in a cold shower, an attempt to keep the hives at bay.
But then there are those days where I’ve done nothing but wake up to find they’ve wreaked havoc on my body. Or while working diligently at my computer, I might become aware that my nails have been making contact with my skin more often than they should be – because a constellation of burning hives have formed without warning, stretching across my skull and down the back of my head.
Not knowing what makes it happen is the most frustrating thing in the world.
There is a reason why a lot of people living with chronic skin conditions tend to also live with mental illness–dealing with this shit can be mega depressing. Yet I’ve often been dismissed as overreacting or being “too sensitive” about everything, especially regarding my skin or my body. What’s almost worst are those hopefuls who think they can save you.
“Have you tried going without gluten? Or dairy? Have you heard about this vitamin, or that one?”
I know such suggestions are backed by good intentions, but not everything can be magically solved with a diet or supplement. I know. I’ve tried. I have been shopped around to dermatologists and specialists like a guinea pig my entire life. I’ve tried everything and anything from Retina-A creams that made my skin fall off, to “acne-fighting” systems like ProActiv, and various other medications I’ve lost track of. I would build up trust only to watch it fall, as each thing I tried yielded few results, and I failed to gain control.
My anxiety and depression went undiagnosed until I hit college, but looking back, I see the ways it affected me and the ways in which I coped. Certain coping mechanisms have followed me into adulthood – namely, a tendency to pick and pick at my skin compulsively, a condition called dermatillomania. It started when I would read in bed at night as an introverted adolescent, squeezing pimples, popping zits, scraping bumps, and picking scabs, then pressing the pages of my book to my forehead to blot the blood away. My childhood books are filled with a sprinkling of dried-brown spots of blood. It was my little secret.
Now it is a thing I am hyper-aware of. I know how counterproductive the picking is to treating my conditions, but my conditions exacerbate it. The scars that litter my body will not let me forget. I can name it and fight against it, but the act of picking puts me in a trance that is not unpleasant – especially in times of elevated anxiety.
I often lift my hands to my head impulsively to find a source of comfort, searching for imperfections to pull or scrape away. Before I know it, I’ll be in that place for hours; I have been late for work or missed sleep due to my picking habits more than I’d like to admit. It isn’t until there’s dried blood under my nails that I realize the damage I’m doing to myself. And honestly, sometimes, I just don’t care enough to stop.
When I do, I control my skin-picking by keeping my hands occupied. “Idle hands are the devil’s play things” applies twice over when you find an odd and compulsive satisfaction in detaching scales and gouging at bumps. So I direct my hands to focus instead on things like petting my cat, crafting worthwhile things, writing, doodling, designing, nail-painting, origami, and poking at games on my iPad. I am always on the look-out for new ways to keep my fidgety fingers away from destructive habits – I just need to maintain the strength and sense of awareness to choose the alternatives over the picking.
When in doubt, I will turn to products for help – but never a solution. Right now my routine in the morning and at night includes using a keratoplast cream facial cleanser that has many sensitive skin-soothing properties, a mixture of chamomile extract and water as a toner, and rose hip oil to reduce flakiness, along with Cetaphil moisturizers. As for make-up? Mineral foundations only.
I’ve tried several antihistamines to try to deal with the hives, none of which really made any difference. One antihistamine actually caused a flare-up, so that was rather fascinating. When I’m not rubbing a cocktail of different medicated shampoos and foams into my scalp during the most desperate of times, I find using natural products to be very soothing for my seborrhea, if not not a cure-all.
A few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with a couple drop of tea tree and lavender essential oils, diluted in a couple cups of water, makes for a fantastic ph-balancing and anti-fungal rinse. Followed with a non-drying paraben-free shampoo and a bit of coconut oil to rub into sore spots and the ends of my bleach-damaged hair? Even better. I may never feel true comfort in my skin, or have any control over how it treats me–but I can put all of my control into how I treat it back.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m playing at chemist, performing tests of trial and error every day. Products that work now may not work in a few months, so while I may feel as though I have the upper hand while I smooth and apply, I know I need to be realistic. It’s unlikely any one thing will solve all my problems. Sometimes I hate my skin with a burning and fiery passion of everything that is in me. I let it fill my heart until I feel sick. I cry and yell about it until I no longer have a voice to project. I acknowledge my feelings as valid and let them exist within me.
And then, eventually, I move on. Some days I do self-care photo shoots where I enhance all the blemishes on my face at that moment, just to see how I feel about it. Or I’ll stop wearing make-up for a while to see what happens, how I handle it, and how the world doesn’t end when my bare skin is on display. As I let myself feel things, express them, and let them pass–I can reach a place of indifference and come to even accept my skin at times. I still get very frustrated, and that frustration turns into hate and anger towards my body and my skin for letting me down, but at the end of the day – I can let the frustration dissipate.
Because there is nothing else to do with the things that are always there, except to learn to live with them.
