Skin

I have skin problems. I've had them all my life. I'm always in pain, because it's...painful. I'm always itchy, because it's...itchy. Basically, I have a bit of eczema, a bit of hayfever, an ever-changing list of things I'm allergic to, bad reactions to heat and stress, and so on. The list is probably longer than the list of magnetic people in the world*. Because that list is not very long. Obviously**.

One list that is possibly larger than the problems with my skin is the things that I have to do or use to combat the problems. Since I can remember I've used about 100 different creams - most of which I am now immune to. Making them useless. I've also had to use different things in the shower, baths, eating different things, taking weird pills, all sorts of junk. I also went through 'phototherapy', in which the idea was to pretty much give me a major sunburn, and it would kill my crap skin cells and grow back new good ones. Bad idea. Made me about 10000000% worse.

I have always been extremely self-conscious about my skin. It's red, it's ugly, it's broken, it falls off, and I hate it. There was a time when I always wore long sleeves and collars to cover up as much as possible. Now don't get me wrong. I don't want this to be a 'I'm so helpless, give me some pity please, my life sucks' blog. I don't want no pity. I'm writing this (I started writing this last year and didn't - mainly because of the self-consciousness) because it's one of the things that brings me down the most, and I feel that by getting it out there, I can ignore it more and move on with life. Plus, when I weigh up all the positives in my life and all the hardships other people have to deal with versus my little skin problems? I have not much to complain about really.

Over the last year, I've learnt to stop caring so much and realised that other people - at least I think - don't really seem to care either. I talk about it openly now, and even make jokes about myself. I told K that if I ever committed a murder, the forensics team wouldn't even have to bother searching for fingerprints. They could walk in there, collect up all the skin, and by the ridiculous amount, get me straight away. Gross? Yeh probs. Whatever, I'm down with the reptiles. We go on shedding trips together.

So that's that. We all struggle with something, and my skin is my daily struggle, and it has been for all 19 years of my life. It will probably always be. I still have bad days, when it gets me really down, but at least I don't hate my body as much as I used to. If beauty is only skin deep, I am the ugliest bastard you have ever met. Luckily... I have a very attractive bone structure? ...Crap. End.

PS. I've never actually tried praying consistently for it. You'd think, or I'd think maybe, that I would have given that some thought. It's probably because I'm really bad at praying consistently at all. Somebody recently told me to try reading a certain bit of the Bible - Psalm 91 - that is supposedly a healing prayer. A younger me would have grouped that in religious weirdo stuff category, even though I believe in the religion. But I'm giving it a go. It's good so far, because afterwards I'm in the mood for praying anyway. So now you know. The Real End***.

*Number 6. They're all pretty incredible, but the craziest ones have to be 2, 6 and 7. 1 is pretty awesome too. I don't respect 4 and 10. 4 because it's stupid. He began eating weird things as a child? After you manage to survive one bottle cap, you consider yourself lucky and stop. You do not then try to eat a whole Cessna 150 aircraft. 10 is just because it's not that super, just a bit gross, and I've seen it too many times on Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

** This is one of my many new favourite games. Or, things that I do in my head to never let myself get bored. I just say things that are ridiculous, but cannot be argued with. Eg. During Beach Mission: "Wow. It is hotter than a Russian Winter." "That car is more red than a thousand yellow MnMs." (Although I've been argued with that one thousand yellow MnMs could be used to make a fairly decent red. I think that's ridiculous, and I'm not going to bother trying to prove them wrong.)

*** Except for the stuff underneath The Real End.

**** Extra stars.