Day 340: Squishy bits

My skin is feeling hot and raw from this new acne medication the doctor has me on. It burns. Not as bad as other treatments I’ve done, but I can definitely feel it.

It’s disappointing that I’ve got to go through three months of this before my GP will even talk about referring me to a dermatologist, but I’m trying not to fall into a funk over it. No, I’m /not/ falling into a funk over it. I know how to take the better path. I’ve done it before. I’m doing it now.

Maybe getting a dermatologist to prescribe me another course of Roaccutane (the hardcore skin drug that finally cleared me up in my mid-20s, although the spots have started to come back over recent years) wouldn’t even be best. There are so many potential long-term side-effects of that drug, I don’t know for certain that I’d want another load of it in my system for six months. Arthritis and joint issues and back problems and liver and kidney damage are all possibilities, and while I’ve thus far had only minor problems from the first course a decade ago - mostly blocked oil glands in my eyelids, which make me prone to styes - and from what I’ve read a second course is tolerated no worse than the first, it still wouldn’t be without dangers.

So maybe I’m better slathering on cream every night, and hoping it’s not for the rest of my life. But as the acne has been consistent for two decades now, and no diet or treatment, save the Roaccutane, has made any difference, I’m probably better off not trying to run down the clock on it.

Better, then, to put my energy into accepting my skin for what it is. If I can’t change it, I can change how I think about it. Rather than frame it as an impossible problem and a shameful disfigurement that I try to hide from people, instead just see it as a frustration, but one that isn’t going anywhere, so there’s no point feeding it with the energy of attention. 

Shame is a monster, and cerebral energy feeds it. So stop feeding it. Accept that my skin isn’t great, carry on putting on this cream every night while it isn’t too much of an imposition to do so, and then go away and concentrate on living my life. Writing, photography. I want to learn how to drive, finally. Travel more - which I’ve always avoided because of the onerous nature of my various skin care regimens, and because having such bad acne growing up gave me the worst confidence, made me completely insular, tore my self-esteem to tatters.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I’m framing a new relationship to my skin, starting now. You keep my squishy bits inside me. You protect me from dirt and rain and heat and wasps. You are the mystical threshold between self and other. Though you are not perfect, and a little worse at regulating sebum production and guarding against bacteria in the pores than the norm for this one species on this one planet at this one point in evolution, you are a hell of a lot better than having no skin at all.

So thank you. I will now go and put some Differin on you, to help you do your job, and I will think lovingly of you, and be appreciative of all you do for me, and stop taking you for granted.

Imagine if my skellington bits all fell out all over the floor? That’d be awful.

This way, imperfect and flawed thought it may be, is infinitely better.