Written by Ayanda M.
Listen, have you heard of the notion that the body keeps score?
We’ve long understood that our bodies reflect all of the happenings in our emotional realm, and that the emotional realm itself holds depths that the conscious mind can barely fathom.
Ordinarily, this triad is great: you feel good, you think good, you look good. However, those emotional depths can retain a surprising amount of deep-seated stuff.
It can get nightmarish quite fast, and I should know: my skin almost self-destructed teaching me this lesson!
“What the hell happened?!”
First, some backstory.
In my teen years, I had the misfortune of having a pretty intense case of eczema. I was lucky. It would only appear behind my knees, under my arms and on the inside of my elbows. However, having it still sucked: my skin would feel dry and diabolically itchy, and scratching would inflame my skin, making it sensitive and patchy. The patchiness would evolve into cracked skin which would dry out, and back to the ninth circle of hell I went as the itch-scratch cycle began anew.
Thankfully as I grew older the condition receded, only rearing its scaly head when I underwent moments of big sudden stress.
I bet you can see where this is going; a foreshadowing so intense, it’s five-shadowing.
This tale starts much like many (spooky) tales: with a man. Cue the ominous music.
I was in a relationship with a man that I came to love and wanted to commit to. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel the same way.
We broke up and reconciled many times and while he never confessed the real reason for our breakups, I got the impression he’d seen some greener grass elsewhere (Sebastian the Crab literally opened a song about the dangers of this).
In what I thought was at least a small victory for me, I never told him about my true feelings, and one day we broke up for good. I committed to never speaking to him again and refused all updates on his life.
This state of affairs remained for several years, until I accidentally came across a social media update from a common friend we shared: this update was congratulating my ex and his new girlfriend on a new step in their lives. Upon closer inspection of the candid picture included of said couple, I saw it: an ominously blue silk sash, of the “Mother-to-be” variety.
For some context, it had been years since my last eczema flare-up and that one had caught me by surprise as well; rearing up at a time where I felt stressed but stable. It had presented itself the way it always did in my teen years but was kind enough to limit its reach to the insides of my elbows and a little on my hands.
This time around was an entirely different beast.
From the day I made the discovery, my skin on my entire body felt alive with a burning itching sensation. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before: the itching would subside by day, but by night I felt like I had been dropped into a vat of red ants. I even checked my bed, thinking the mattress had been invaded by bedbugs. Nothing of the sort!
Then it got worse: the skin on my torso, back and thighs erupted with small red, sensitive dry patches that itched like hell. When they partially healed, they dried down to spots that made me resemble a leopard (my favourite animal, yes, but not like this!). I despaired: I was already dealing with the complicated feeling from my discovery, now this!
It wasn’t until I searched my symptoms online that I discovered that I was not only having an eczema flare, but it had also morphed into an entirely different type of eczema that I’d never experienced. I was dumbfounded.
“What the hell do I do now?!”
Now that I knew what was going on, I had to take stock. Clearly this news was affecting me deeper than I cared to confess.
I hate to admit it, but I was… heartbroken. It had been years since he and I had spoken, but in retrospect I still loved him and some small, secret part of myself that survived the post-breakup purge still held a despairing hope that we would someday reconcile once more and start our own little family. That little blue sash dashed any hope of that ever happening. That night my little heart wailed in agony, and unbeknownst to me, my skin began to shriek in answer.
This state of affairs was not going to work.
I journalled. I told the truth to myself.
I took warm soothing oatmeal baths, smoothed my skin with warm tissue oil and let my skin take its time healing.
Crucially, I never broke my embargo on that ex. In this process, those long-enduring feelings eventually departed. And besides, I would rather do things that would get ferociously redacted by any editor with sense than ever go near him again.
“What did I learn?”
In the wake of this experience, it became important for me to tell the truth particularly in my romantic relationships. I dug a little deeper: the reason I hadn’t told this ex the truth of my feelings was that I saw through his own actions that he wasn’t capable of honouring them.
This became my personal litmus test: if I couldn’t trust someone with the truth of my feelings on any topic, they couldn’t be trusted with me.
It’s been a while since that hellish experience and my skin has completely recovered; it was as if nothing had ever happened. In fact, my skin is even smoother than it was before, almost as some sort of peace offering!
Listen, ‘The Body Keeps Score’ isn’t just the title of a book; it’s real talk!
