Eczema

I was born with a common skin condition called Eczema. It makes the skin extremely reactive to any type of internal or external changes and comes out as very itchy patches on your body that you can’t stop scratching till your skin opens up and blood’s under your fingernails.

Anyone with such a condition knows the tricks of going to sleep with gloves on your hands, keeping your nails nice and short at all times, staying away from minty chewing-gum and stacking your bag with the most chemical creams on the planet. Let’s just say that floating around in the salty dead sea was more like diving into an acid bath.

Nobody really knows this about me, but my eczema can be very brutal, to the extent where my whole face is covered with swollen, flaky and red patches so bad I can’t leave the house, and I’m not someone to hide at home because of a pimple.

My close friends know about this and make it so much better. They know to tap my hand off when I’m unconsciously scratching away, and to ask me after what’s wrong, because they know I scratch when I’m stressed or upset. I cant hide anything from them.

My skin is extremely reactive in general. I blush very easily, I blush when I accidentally make eye contact with a stranger in the street, so no- if I’ve blushed while looking at you in the street it does not mean i’m into you, I just can’t control it! I blush sometimes only from thinking about an embarrassing situation (a real one or even one I made up), I blush when I feel pretty, when I feel sad, when I’m excited… But the craziest thing is not the amount of times I blush a day, but the speed I manage to switch from a chilled white chick to a complete tomato. The snap of a finger and the blink of an eye. And once again, I can’t hide anything. Sometimes I feel like I’m one of those squishy balls the once you squeeze them the eyes pop out, but for me it’s the red face.

Just like my skin, I’m a very reactive person in my personality. Even if I don’t show it, like every normal human, everything affects me. If I think I heard my name I’ll jump and scream back till this person finds me and gets the answer he needs. I don’t like keeping people guessing but I love being kept guessing, just because a little flirt never killed anybody and it keeps me on my feet.

At night I lock the door so no one else can see

It’s 1 am, you’ve been tossing and turning all night. The thoughts won’t stop, did I pay my rent, how am I going to find work, should I’ve really have said that to her. You can’t stop, you take a book, hoping to distract yourself, great now you are excited, wide awake and your brain on speed. Am I the best version of myself, am I doing enough. You sit up on your bed, let your feet touch the ground, your room is dark but your eyes have adjusted to it so that you can barely see. Get up for some stretches, should I do the thing? No it’s too late, just put a relaxing song on and calm yourself, a little meditation. After a few minutes on chill soundtracks, youtube gives me “te amo” Rihanna, on the first few beats my shoulders goes uncontrollably into fight mode, I open my eyes dramatically to face myself in the mirror, there it goes. What I dreaded the most, there is no stoping it now, MIDNIGHT DANCE OFF TO MYSELF IN THE MIRROR. Start by arching your back, making sure you ease into it, no sudden movements, just smooth little body rolls and careful little turns. You’ve warmed up and youtube is torturing you with Ariana Grande hits and you can’t stop. You’re pretty sweaty now, just went from Dua Lipa until madonna through a little tame impala and some jungle and it’s time to express, change of genre, lady gaga million reasons blasting in your airpod, and you let it out, on your knees, bow down, to pray, or cry or laugh or anything you need to let go of. Finally, a bad song, run up the stairs to get a glass of water you chug just like Alex from “flashdance” after her session. Come back down, it’s 4 am. Crowl into bed, heart still beating fast, your hair all over the place and a big smile on your face, knowing you’ll do it all over again tomorrow night.

Existential meltdown

There’s a thing about meeting new people all the time, having so many superficial relations and meaningless conversations, the world becomes flatter. I’ve introduced myself as a different person to everyone I’ve met, not on purpose, but because of the situation, context and circumstances I was exposed in a different light. And I notice it by reflecting on the encounter afterwards, and then it becomes messy. Once you’ve set an impression on someone, you feel the need to deliver on the same frequency each time, till you actually become this person. And another frequency with another person, till you become that person and so on with every new encounter. Then you get lost. I’ve found myself having two counter opinions on the same topic, depending on the person I am talking to, in other words if you would have put me at one point in time with me at another point in time in the same room they might have a steamy argument. And naturally it makes me question my credibility and my real values. But what if that’s the beauty of this year, our generation and this time of life? What if the beauty is to adapt and to know that things are never as obvious as they seem and everything is ambiguous. And the answer for me would be to keep questioning and bending till you can’t anymore, and that’s where you get certainty. But to get to the point where you can’t bend anymore means you have to push yourself out there and give everything and everybody a chance to surprise you. It’s scary. But that is the less beautiful part of this time. We are scared to feel, to get too close to an edge, but you will only know where your edge is when you get there. The cave might seem frightening from outside but you are not actually frightened by the cave, you are frightened to feel fear and the unknown. Just jump in the pool, it’s not that cold.

Intimus

Intimacy. I’ve never really understood that glamorous term. « Things that happen when in a close relationship with a person » the internet might say. This definition sounds outdated to me, in a world where people share intimate moments with strangers all the time. Brushing (accidentally or not) your arm against the person besides you at the movies, or spontaneously sharing very personal things with someone you just met more easily than with your best friends or lovers. No, intimacy is when you share a part of you even though you know that the other person’s response might hurt you deeper than ever. It’s not ripping your clothes off, but slowly, gently, item per item removing them until you are fully bare to whatever might come next. You might ask why is it so hard to be intimate with our dearest. The answer is in the word, intimate. From Latin « intimus », which means deepest. You are revealing your deepest, purest self, and you fear it won’t be enough. I get easily intimidated by someone I suspect know me too well, and I usually flee. You might react otherwise, but it is a threatening situation that forces your body into a physiological response. Your deepest self, may it shape itself as long as needed, at some point will reach a place of no return, and when you know that this is it and it is unchangeable, people who won’t like it will either have to piss off, or accept it. But the most important is that you accept it.

Be the equation

My physics enthusiast older brother loves sharing new interesting facts he leaned in his studies. All the ways gravity affects everything, infinity and « beautiful » equations he found. On one of our many conversations on the topic, he told me about an equation concerning the integral of a sequence of numbers and letters that I didn’t understand. He said « there are rules to apply in order to get to the answer, but once you apply those on this specific equation, the answer cannot be found. There is an answer, but you can’t get to it. You just have to believe it ». I got really confused. Maths and physics, being the most accurate fields in providing me proof of how the world works, has turned on me by telling me to believe the answer exists but it is impossible to get to it. As you might think, my belief system started to shake. Now remembering this conversation, I understand that there are bigger things than us in the world, things you can’t control or prove. And I don’t mean to make this text religious, but the fact the maths couldn’t give me the proof of that specific answer, did give me proof that there are things that you just have to believe in, even if you can’t see them.

Blond woman enjoying her sun

She has a manly kind of sitting even though her gentleness and femininity are unquestionable. Anyone could be sitting in that manner, but it wouldn’t look like when she sits in that manner. Not trying to show how comfortable she is with herself and her body, but legitimately just comfortable. And she might not perceive herself as I just did, I might even be the only one in this cafe who perceived her as such, but I always wonder if the things that are the most obvious to me in other people are just the things that I am self conscious about? I might be a little self conscious of being alone, and I’m trying to run away from those thoughts by creating new ones about somebody else. I am alone in the world and I am realising slowly that you really aren’t ever alone. Because every person you meet engraves a part of them in you, that you probably liked in this person subconsciously or consciously. You will always carry your past with you, and if you decide to, you can change it.