When I was a kid I spent a ton of time in the forest preserve that touched the edge of my backyard. I recognized all the plants and trees, though I didn’t know the names of most of them. I spent so much time there that I recognized them on an individual basis. Here was the patch where the lilies of the valley came up, and here was the place with the giant tree that housed a raccoon family most years.

I spent a lot of time carelessly destroying stuff, before I got more philosophical about things like ecosystems and oxygen. I would cut back wild blackberry canes to clear a path I had made, or dig in the dirt and make trenches. I played with the puffball mushrooms that were as big as my head, first by unmooring them and then kicking them around the backyard and watching them wheeze out little clouds of spores. Finally I would tear them to bits until they looked like pieces of dry, alien bread. I miss those things. I understand that some young puffballs are good to eat.

Anyway, between being out there for hours and having very free rein, I did not wash my hands very often, if at all, during the day. I don’t remember any kind of pre-dinner “get in there and scrub” ritual that I subject my grubby jerks to a lot. While all this was going on, I was still tearing at my skin mindlessly and uncontrollably.

Of course I developed a “trouble spot” on my left arm one day. It was inflamed and red and hurt like crazy. I had a thought I should leave it alone so I did. It was spring and I was still in long sleeves, but not a coat. My grandma came to visit and I sort of forgot about it, except for the fact that that spot really hurt.

My mom took my grandma and me out one day to one of the tourist towns that was about an hour away. It was one of those sickeningly-adorable historic towns, strewn with antique shops, historic mansions, and “eateries.” I felt kind of out of it on the way there, and got worse as the day went on. My whole body was wracked with pain. Even at nine I had some suspicion over that past week that it had something to do with my arm, because I knew a little bit about infections.

I was scared to tell my mom. Often her solution was to immediately involve my stepfather, and from there things would escalate from bad to spastic. I remembered very clearly the lesson of the mittens and how many times I had been yelled at for picking at myself. I figured if I told my mom I didn’t feel well, she would immediately figure out what had happened and I would be facing some kind of worse punishment. I was transparent! I had to keep silent about my condition.

By the time dinner rolled around I felt wrung out and like I had been subjected to a billion taps with a bruise-making hammer all over my body. Even my insides kind of hurt and burned, especially my I arm. I rolled up my sleeve in the bathroom. There were red streaks radiating from the sore on my arm. It was like my body was mapping my veins. I found this kind of fascinating, along with the water coming out of the faucet and pattern on the wallpaper in the historical and cute bathroom.

We were wrapping it up at the last tourist site when my mom paused to take my picture.

“Smile,” she said.

“Mmmph,” I replied.

“She’s just tired,” she said to my grandma.

That night I fell into bed, exhausted and leaden. I snapped awake after a nightmare at one or so, on fire and feeling even worse than I had during the day. What should I do? My mother had to work the next day and I was not allowed in their bedroom unless I was covered in vomit or blood. I met neither of these criteria, so I felt intimidated by their closed door.

Then I remembered. My grandma was there, in the spare room! And she was always happy to see me. I woke her up.

“Grandma, I don’t feel good.”

“Oh, you’re burning up, baby!”

My mother, grandma, and I all bundled into the car and went to the emergency clinic. By this time I think my breathing was even off. I said nothing and just walked where I was lead to. They drew my blood and determined that it was something like sepsis, of course, which the doctor called “blood poisoning.”

“Do you have a scratch or some other injury that is infected?” he said. I pulled back my sleeve to show him my arm.

“How did that happen?” he said.

“I dunno,” I lied. “I think I scratched a bug bite or something.” That sounded plausible, didn’t it? I was sent home with antibiotics. My grandma was supposed to spend spring break doing fun things with me, but instead ended up nursing me on the couch while I watched “Press Your Luck” and “The Price is Right” with her. Game shows always reminded me of her and when my mom left her with me when I was really wee to go live elsewhere. I felt comforted by this. The antibiotics helped immediately, but I was still in pain for days.

My grandma called home to check in with my grandpa and our family in their town. I could hear her southern drawl floating in from the other room as she tried to talk quietly to my aunt.

“She just sits on the couch and cries silently,” she said, meaning me. “The tears just run down her cheeks. I have never seen a kid do that before.”

Did that scare me off of picking at myself? Absolutely. For about a year. And then I cautiously went back to it, until a couple of years later when the sepsis was all but forgotten and I was a full-blown self-torturer again.

Then I became a teenager and was covered in zits as well. At least I looked like most of the people around me, except instead of just having the bumps on my arms and legs, I had backne (fetching) and always had a few somewhere on my chin.

Sadly, the thing that seemed to work best for dealing with the bumps and the fucking with myself are the things you don’t want to do. I was a smoker for a solid year-and-a-half in high school (until I moved to Seattle and was confronted with packs that were double the price) and my skin looked great at that time. I was transferring everything to the constant busyness that comes with being a smoker. Sun, too. If I got a good scorching and it burned, my skin looked great for weeks.

But then things changed, as they always do. I stumbled across this article on Tomato Nation, and from there was able to cyberchondriac more about my condition. I read that it might clear up when I was around thirty, which sounded okay to me, if it happened. But around this time (and starting at 26 or so), my skin started chilling out. It’s gotten better every year, with little or no intercession on my part, because I am the type of person who remembers to moisturize…most of the time. And exfoliates…when I feel like it.

If I ran my hand up my arm right now, I would probably encounter nothing, except scars from years of mutilation. And they are actually pretty faint, barely noticeable. Lucky me. I am slowly working on covering up remaining scars with tattoos. (My philosophy is kind of “UGH, wallpaper over that shit.”) Part of me lost that self-consciousness that I had for years and years, and part of it was my skin improving. Mostly the former, though. Tank tops are back, for the first time since I was six. At thirty, the stage of being ashamed and covered in bumps and scabs still accounts for most of my life, but I hardly think about this anymore at all.

From the time I was born until about five minutes ago, I had keratosis pilaris. Even if you don’t know what this is, you have probably seen it. A person who has it gets little bumps all over their arms and legs, and sometimes face, that often look like little pimples. This is great when you’re eight years old, let me tell you, and you have no idea what’s wrong with you. I was really nailed with it, too, and the other kids were always asking me why I was covered in zits. I didn’t know. My response was to turn red and get quiet, and later to never appear anywhere in a tank top or shorts that hit above the knee, and would dread occasions that involved bathing suits.

I asked my mom about it. Now that I have children, I have no idea if she was incurious about what was usually going on with me or just busy. I asked her why my skin was like that at a young age and she replied that she didn’t know, but that I had been like that since two hours after I was born. I remember being in the car at nine or so and saying that my skin condition bothered me, and she said she got them sometimes, too. Years later I told her how much better that made me feel as a kid to know I wasn’t alone, and she told me she just made that up to make me feel better. I am guessing that I could have had answers in about thirty seconds at one of my annual pediatrician check ups, but it just never happened.

Of course, I never noticed that people around me probably had the same problem. I just thought I was defective. I developed some kind of bizarre Victorian idea that if I could find a way to be more morally sound, maybe I would stop looking deformed. I stole things, set small fires, and was a chronic masturbator. Were my outsides reflecting my charred black innards? Probably. My vain ass used to lie in bed and contemplate prayer as an answer. Not actually pray, just contemplate it. I had no idea how to do it, really. I decided that if I was granted three wishes the first one would be redeemed by fixing my skin. Fuck world peace and all that.

The really bad news was that I was (and still am, to some extent) one of those people who is always fiddling with myself. I twiddle my hair, if my lips are dry I chew on them, and I go apeshit if my skin dares to form a tag. Recently my dentist observed that the enamel in my front teeth is thin and asked me if I am a pen-cap chewer, which I am not. “Pen caps! How disgusting,” I thought to myself. When I got home I looked at my fingers, red and scabby, and realized I had been biting my hangnails for years, and that was probably the cause.

Of course I went after my skin. The excess keratin would rise to the surface and sort of float there like unruly whiteheads. When I got old enough to really start worrying about it, at about five or six, I started brushing it off. Then I got bolder and started picking at them. I learned how to pop them and they would come flying out. But I could never keep up, and sometimes they would form scabs. I would pull the scabs off again and, until my skin absolutely rebelled, and they would last for weeks until they became larger and got inflamed, and then became too painful to rip off one more time. Sometimes I just let them heal up. Winter was better, because I was usually in long sleeves.

Stress was a factor, and became intertwined with how I treated my body. I would scratch away at myself until I was inflamed and bleeding, and then feel ashamed that I couldn’t gain control of this habit. Sometimes I didn’t even realize I was doing it, as if my hands were acting of their own accord. At times, people have watched me do things to myself, like the time I pulled a wart out of my hand at sixteen on my parents’ back deck, or the time I did home surgery on my back.

“Doesn’t that HURT?” people would say.

“Er…should it? Yes?” I would reply.

I don’t know if I was born this way, or years of fiddling has short-circuited something. All I know is that it probably has made me the weakest superhero. “Don’t worry children, I will walk…into these blackberry bushes…and retrieve your ball.” “OOOOH.”

Of course, there had to be consequences for mangling myself for years. My stepfather tried to stop me by making me wear mittens during the day, which made life for a voracious reader a real bitch. Also, mittens are not a very cute look with shorts and tee shirts. I would sit around, trying to flip the pages of my Michael Jackson biography (1985 pre-Bubbles edition) with bemittened hands and crying, until my mother took pity on me and confiscated the mittens.

When I was nine we moved into a house in the woods, where I was always outside, digging in the dirt, collecting sticks, and poking strange plants. My hands were probably always filthy. Of course, this didn’t stop me from torturing my poor skin, and I paid for it with something that could have killed me.

******
More later, I promise. I am tired again. I am like consumption lady or something. “Reginald, move me to the veranda!”

Better today, though. I sleep on my face, usually, which probably explains a lot about my looks. My nose was running so much, but it is so comforting for me to sleep on my face that I put a cloth napkin under my nose, propped up my forehead, and tried to make sure my mouth was unblocked. I’d call that talent, but it was really pathetic. My plan for today is take Strudel out, as it’s cold but sunny, and wade through my four krillion emails. Sorry, everyone! AGGH.