Skin

Wrote this post in a notebook a little earlier on today while I was trying to hash out my annoyance with a particularly crazy-making flare-up of eczema that I can't seem to shift.  What started as a biro splurge ended up giving me a little more patience for my own body and the stellar job it's doing in not allowing me to collapse into a human bean bag with a face.  Not as much silliness as my posts are usually clogged with, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless! 

I have eczema.  Eczema is the medical term given to angry-as-fuck blotches of skin that have taken to crawling.  When it’s especially pissed off (which for me is most of the time), it sends a hot knitting needle of itchy discomfort right into the middle of your brain your brain until you can no longer fight the urge to scratch it, which, after a brief moment of sweet relief, starts the whole bastard cycle over again. 

I have very little patience for my skin’s shit.  Why does it drive me insane with the need to scratch it until it bleeds and inevitably worsens? Why can’t it just get its shit together and behave how it’s supposed to?  The rest of my organs seem to manage it just fine.  Even my poor, bullied liver.

I think that my skin knows what it’s meant to do on some level.  It’s meant to stop my inside stuff from getting out, and all the outside stuff from getting in.  And it’s meant to keep me warm.  What I get is patches of fierce burning that thicken to the point where my “protective” dermal barrier is so tough that it splits and cracks, leaving itself and me vulnerable to infection.

My skin is over zealous.  Bit like me, really.  Eager to do the best it can, it shirks caution in favour of enthusiasm.  It tries too hard, and as a result does the opposite of what it set out to do in the first place.

I’ve been thinking that I need to give my skin a break.  It has a lot of crap to contend with.  It seems only natural that a person who's sensitive to both internal and external stimuli would have equally tumultuous skin. 

I live in a world where sound is constant.  Cloying.  The white noise of my own, usually comforting living room alone can sometimes be too much on a stressful day:

Kettle, football,TV, cat mewling, cars out in the street, neighbours playing music, washing machine spinning and thumping.  All of this competes with the “should I be talking? Sitting is bad for you, you know. I ate too much. I should be writing more. I have to work tomorrow. Work was hard today.  I’m itching. I’m tired.  I’m crazy” chatter in my own head.  All the while, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger and Google are all nagging at me from the animated brick in my fist.  On top of all this, I’m sinking coffee after coffee.  Nature’s famous relaxant.

It’s a wonder that this overly stimulating modern world hasn’t made festering, itchy lumps of us all.  I should be grateful that these raised and reddened bracelets circling my wrists don’t cover my whole fucking body.  My skin is doing the best it can to stay stuck to the person it’s stuck with.  Least I can do is be a little more understanding.

 

Thankyou, skin, you gross, red meat suit! =)