The skin. Our largest organ. Just sitting out there for the world to abuse it and for people to see it. It is a great source of money for industries of beauty. It can get you shot, depending on the melanocyte count. It is waterproof, it stretches with holiday overeating, it keeps our bones from showing and it let's the world know what we do for a living or for fun. Farmer's tan? Red neck? Calloused fingers? Smooth and perfect skin of the white collar world? The finger bump of a writer, the shorts and sock tan of a runner, the "I wash my hands 700 times per day" red and dry hands of a healthcare worker, the wrinkled palms of a bath enthusiast, the speedo tan of the lifeguard, the scars of accidents, surgeries, and births. The hickey marks of a good date and the blisters of a soldier with ill-fitting boots. Our skin can show our diseases from autoimmunity or infection or heart disease or high cholesterol, like vitiligo, butterfly rash, Janeway Lesions, or my personal favorite, atopic dermatitis.
I take medications to suppress my immune system so it does not attack my skin quite so viciously. I need to work, after all. Have you ever had poison ivy or a bunch of mosquito bites? Imagine that 24/7, head to toe. Anyway, it could be worse. But the 60-100 mg of prednisone it can take to battle my inner demons has made me lose 1:30 minutes per mile speed on average in my running. And that just plain bites. I mean, gosh yes I am glad I can still run at all, and holy moly, things could be much much much worse. But I like to run, and I like to run fast, and I just cannot anymore, because the largest organ in my body is being dive bombed with a nuclear arsenal every second of the day.
Speaking of skin issues and nuclear arsenal.
But I digress.
My daughter's hand (back to our early morning run) will heal. That is the other thing that blows me away about skin. We can shoot each other, saw open the sternum and sew it back together, get blistering sunburns, and falls and accidents and we still can heal. And even when the skin is not broken, but our hearts are torn apart, we can heal. And even when hate seems to be the new love, as cool to us as a president who is stupider than most of us and somehow therefore makes us feel better about ourselves, even with that cold, hard fact-we can still heal.
My skin, well that is another story. But despite it being the most uncomfortable organ I own, I will still keep walking around in it. My Dad, who had a heart transplant, learned to be wth a brand new ticker. My Mom, who lost a breast to cancer, learned to stuff the fake breast into her bra and head out for the day. I cannot remove or transplant my skin but I can remember the strength my parents showed in hard times, and I can also appreciate the fact that beauty is skin deep.
And although all I want for Christmas is beautiful skin, like the kind of skin where I could bare my arms and legs and back and midriff and face without embarrassment, and the kind of skin that would allow me to be a fast runner again and the kind of immune system that didn't make me bald every couple of years and the kind of skin that did not make me feel like a freak of nature, I can see that things could be worse. I just wish the world was a kinder place and that how we looked did not matter quite so much. I fear the next four years will not offer us a leader who will be kind to those of us who are not beautiful, who have "too much" melanin, who have outward evidence of disease or imperfection. I hope the American spirit of kindness kicks in and saves us from descending into truly believing that hate is the new cool thing. I hope.
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