Skin
Michigan Stats, April 10
Total Confirmed Cases: 22,783
Total COVID-19 Deaths: 1,281
Daily Confirmed Cases: 1,279
Daily COVID-19 Deaths: 205
They're digging mass graves in New York City.
***
Twelve hours of sleep. Relief seeps down through muscle and bone, languid and heavy, like syrup.
***
Two weeks since I left the house.
***
Three weeks ago I cut the gremlins' wet food rations in half. They wasted a lot anyway, and I don't know when it will be a good idea to go back to the store.
They only get wet food because I sprinkle Thackeray's medicine on it. The smaller sprinkle radius calls for steadier hands than I have these days. I manage.
When I set his plate in front of him the dissolving powder sits in a pudding layer on top of the dab of gravy. He manages too.
***
Lately I don't look in a mirror any more than I have to, unless I'm skating my fingertips in minute circles over my face, seeking out pockets of bacterial matting burgeoning in soft, secret places in the wells of my pores. Even then the mirror is at quintuple magnification, reflecting patchwork Picasso fragments of my face. I look at the closeup, the detail. Never the whole.
As isolation has been hell on me, I've been hell on my skin. In the abrupt disruption of growth, in the short drop and sudden stop into stagnation, the old coping structures rematerialized. Stalwart as ever. Holding me up.
Never mind that they're maladaptive and brutal. It's better than falling further. Any comfort, any port in a storm.
***
My mother taught me picking. All my life I watched her leaning, hips braced against the bathroom sink, tipping her torso close to the mirror, mouth pulled down, cheeks stretched out, nails squeezing pores like fleas. I thought it was mildly gross.
Her own skin didn't satisfy her. She picked my father's back and shoulders, stretching him out facedown on their bed, scraping and squeezing the yellow plugs from his pores, lightly smacking him when he hissed. I thought it was one more thing that husbands and wives do.
When she started picking my skin, I sat, skinny and compliant, folded up like a spider in front of her on the bathroom floor. I had always known not to say no. She squeezed, with measured, merciless pressure, at the tight red points of infection. She used needles when the pressure failed. I knew, in some place in my mind that tucked away the knowledge, safeguarded from scrutiny, that she loved my tiny grunts of swallowed pain, the strain in my hunched muscles, as much as she loved to soothe them. I thought it was one more thing that mothers do.
They were the only times she wanted to touch me.
I don't remember when or why she stopped. Maybe my sister's flat refusal to sit for the same treatment galvanized my fledgling courage. Probably my mother just lost interest.
By high school I had internalized the habit. I hated the pain but I loved the relief that followed, the purging of pressure in the pores, a hunter's satisfaction in flushing out prey. The inexpressible finding expression.
My mother told me sharply, Don't pick.
***
There's still no solid psychological consensus on compulsive skin picking. It doesn't get its own category in the DSM. It's cautiously agreed to place somewhere between OCD and self-harm, the brain's compromise between counting sidewalk cracks and cutting.
One hypothesis, a long time ago, posited that it's common in people who have inadequate emotional regulation. Self-soothing when overstimulated; self-stimulating when bored.
I liked the clinical language. It's always easier to think about my damage when I can view it through the detached lens of curiosity.
***
Whatever the experts argued, I picked to process emotion. It was an anchor in the physical, a one-to-one ratio hitching the abstract to the concrete. A thought for every expressed plug. A feeling for every purged pore. All the stresses, all the fears, all the things that hurt me. I couldn't journal about them, couldn't talk about them. In a life where words weren't safe, the wordless had to do. I channeled it all into a canvas of scars lightly flecking my skin.
All of my skin. Pale scars, livid scars, flat scars, lumpy scars. Layer upon layer, scattered over every angle and curve of my body, a frenetic tattoo, a living galaxy laid down by my fingers.
If someone ever told me A penny for your thoughts I'd laugh, stand naked under a fluorescent, and get their next paycheck.
***
October, 2019. The dermatologist diagnosed me at a glance. Hormonal acne.
Two simple words untied a knot. A lifetime of shame loosened. One more instance of learning that my mother's voice in my head (picking leads to zits, you're doing this to yourself) was wrong.
Androgen blocker and retinoid cream. The flare-ups eased. The scars began to fade.
March, 2020. Pandemic.
I pulled out the magnification mirror. There was too much fear to keep my fingers still.
***
I sit in bright light for Zoom meetings and Google Duo calls so the overexposure washes out my skin.
After all, the calls never last long, so there's no point in makeup.
***
The governor extended the stay-at-home order until April 30th.
***
Frank says I have a terrifying ability, born of a lifetime in crisis, to zero in with all my focus on what's in front of me. It's why I'm so good in a high-pressure catastrophe. (And why I've been falling apart in the low-pressure waiting. There's nothing to distract me from the horror at hand.) To survive the constant danger of my upbringing, I learned to be so fully present that nothing else exists in my mind. As soon as a threat crosses into the outside perimeter of my radar, I am already moving to meet it, eyes fixed on it with everything that I am.
He says most people can't do that. Their minds are always divided, worrying not just about the immediate but also the distant, the parallel. It pulls their attention. They're never all here.
He says part of Special Forces training is instilling the mental focus that I learned in chronic, sustained trauma. He says the dropout rate is largely due to the failure to learn it.
He says it's a gift. It's crucial for a new kind of success. He also says my next step, equally crucial, is learning to look farther ahead.
***
Plans at work are underway for the gradual resumption of normal life after the end of the month. It could be denial, desperation. It could be hope.
***
We learned the other day that our jobs are assured at least through the end of May. In an environment where other companies in the field, in Detroit and across the country, are laying off people in droves, reading the CEO's email cut through a tightrope of tension strung somewhere under my stomach. For the first time in weeks I felt like I could breathe.
***
I've learned, these last three years, to be kinder to myself. Sometimes that means accepting a regression. Sometimes that means gently putting the regression away.
It seems I'm also learning a little about advance planning. Or maybe it's just the anticipation of future stress reduction.
In any event, I put away the magnification mirror. I decided to pull out the retinoid cream tonight.
***
Even through the acid reflux churning a slow nausea through my stomach, I'm hungry.
It's nice to feel hungry.
Total Confirmed Cases: 22,783
Total COVID-19 Deaths: 1,281
Daily Confirmed Cases: 1,279
Daily COVID-19 Deaths: 205
They're digging mass graves in New York City.
***
Twelve hours of sleep. Relief seeps down through muscle and bone, languid and heavy, like syrup.
***
Two weeks since I left the house.
***
Three weeks ago I cut the gremlins' wet food rations in half. They wasted a lot anyway, and I don't know when it will be a good idea to go back to the store.
They only get wet food because I sprinkle Thackeray's medicine on it. The smaller sprinkle radius calls for steadier hands than I have these days. I manage.
When I set his plate in front of him the dissolving powder sits in a pudding layer on top of the dab of gravy. He manages too.
***
Lately I don't look in a mirror any more than I have to, unless I'm skating my fingertips in minute circles over my face, seeking out pockets of bacterial matting burgeoning in soft, secret places in the wells of my pores. Even then the mirror is at quintuple magnification, reflecting patchwork Picasso fragments of my face. I look at the closeup, the detail. Never the whole.
As isolation has been hell on me, I've been hell on my skin. In the abrupt disruption of growth, in the short drop and sudden stop into stagnation, the old coping structures rematerialized. Stalwart as ever. Holding me up.
Never mind that they're maladaptive and brutal. It's better than falling further. Any comfort, any port in a storm.
***
My mother taught me picking. All my life I watched her leaning, hips braced against the bathroom sink, tipping her torso close to the mirror, mouth pulled down, cheeks stretched out, nails squeezing pores like fleas. I thought it was mildly gross.
Her own skin didn't satisfy her. She picked my father's back and shoulders, stretching him out facedown on their bed, scraping and squeezing the yellow plugs from his pores, lightly smacking him when he hissed. I thought it was one more thing that husbands and wives do.
When she started picking my skin, I sat, skinny and compliant, folded up like a spider in front of her on the bathroom floor. I had always known not to say no. She squeezed, with measured, merciless pressure, at the tight red points of infection. She used needles when the pressure failed. I knew, in some place in my mind that tucked away the knowledge, safeguarded from scrutiny, that she loved my tiny grunts of swallowed pain, the strain in my hunched muscles, as much as she loved to soothe them. I thought it was one more thing that mothers do.
They were the only times she wanted to touch me.
I don't remember when or why she stopped. Maybe my sister's flat refusal to sit for the same treatment galvanized my fledgling courage. Probably my mother just lost interest.
By high school I had internalized the habit. I hated the pain but I loved the relief that followed, the purging of pressure in the pores, a hunter's satisfaction in flushing out prey. The inexpressible finding expression.
My mother told me sharply, Don't pick.
***
There's still no solid psychological consensus on compulsive skin picking. It doesn't get its own category in the DSM. It's cautiously agreed to place somewhere between OCD and self-harm, the brain's compromise between counting sidewalk cracks and cutting.
One hypothesis, a long time ago, posited that it's common in people who have inadequate emotional regulation. Self-soothing when overstimulated; self-stimulating when bored.
I liked the clinical language. It's always easier to think about my damage when I can view it through the detached lens of curiosity.
***
Whatever the experts argued, I picked to process emotion. It was an anchor in the physical, a one-to-one ratio hitching the abstract to the concrete. A thought for every expressed plug. A feeling for every purged pore. All the stresses, all the fears, all the things that hurt me. I couldn't journal about them, couldn't talk about them. In a life where words weren't safe, the wordless had to do. I channeled it all into a canvas of scars lightly flecking my skin.
All of my skin. Pale scars, livid scars, flat scars, lumpy scars. Layer upon layer, scattered over every angle and curve of my body, a frenetic tattoo, a living galaxy laid down by my fingers.
If someone ever told me A penny for your thoughts I'd laugh, stand naked under a fluorescent, and get their next paycheck.
***
October, 2019. The dermatologist diagnosed me at a glance. Hormonal acne.
Two simple words untied a knot. A lifetime of shame loosened. One more instance of learning that my mother's voice in my head (picking leads to zits, you're doing this to yourself) was wrong.
Androgen blocker and retinoid cream. The flare-ups eased. The scars began to fade.
March, 2020. Pandemic.
I pulled out the magnification mirror. There was too much fear to keep my fingers still.
***
I sit in bright light for Zoom meetings and Google Duo calls so the overexposure washes out my skin.
After all, the calls never last long, so there's no point in makeup.
***
The governor extended the stay-at-home order until April 30th.
***
Frank says I have a terrifying ability, born of a lifetime in crisis, to zero in with all my focus on what's in front of me. It's why I'm so good in a high-pressure catastrophe. (And why I've been falling apart in the low-pressure waiting. There's nothing to distract me from the horror at hand.) To survive the constant danger of my upbringing, I learned to be so fully present that nothing else exists in my mind. As soon as a threat crosses into the outside perimeter of my radar, I am already moving to meet it, eyes fixed on it with everything that I am.
He says most people can't do that. Their minds are always divided, worrying not just about the immediate but also the distant, the parallel. It pulls their attention. They're never all here.
He says part of Special Forces training is instilling the mental focus that I learned in chronic, sustained trauma. He says the dropout rate is largely due to the failure to learn it.
He says it's a gift. It's crucial for a new kind of success. He also says my next step, equally crucial, is learning to look farther ahead.
***
Plans at work are underway for the gradual resumption of normal life after the end of the month. It could be denial, desperation. It could be hope.
***
We learned the other day that our jobs are assured at least through the end of May. In an environment where other companies in the field, in Detroit and across the country, are laying off people in droves, reading the CEO's email cut through a tightrope of tension strung somewhere under my stomach. For the first time in weeks I felt like I could breathe.
***
I've learned, these last three years, to be kinder to myself. Sometimes that means accepting a regression. Sometimes that means gently putting the regression away.
It seems I'm also learning a little about advance planning. Or maybe it's just the anticipation of future stress reduction.
In any event, I put away the magnification mirror. I decided to pull out the retinoid cream tonight.
***
Even through the acid reflux churning a slow nausea through my stomach, I'm hungry.
It's nice to feel hungry.
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