I blogged the left photo a thousand years ago on MySpace...

I blogged the left photo a thousand years ago on MySpace.  It might be up on another blog somewhere else, too, but  I doubt that most of you have seen it.

The left photo was taken fresh out of the shower sometime in 2007.  Hopefully the Internet won't flag it as too much nudity.  It's like, shoulders and jacked-up face.  Might be scary to some, but I wouldn't think super offensive.

The left photo was taken at a point when I didn't have insurance or a lot of other options for dealing with my health issues.  I don't know why, but my psoriasis hasn't been shy about getting on my face.  A lot of people who have this condition don't seem to have that problem, but I almost always have.  Face and scalp have always been terrible for me.  That's one major reason I used to keep my head shaved.  It was just easier to deal with head flakes when there was no hair in the way.

I remember back when I used to try to hide my face with makeup.  That only made things worse, and then one day I had the experience of someone asking me if I was trying to hide scabs from a skate-boarding accident.  It was at that point that I realized I was fooling no one, and just let it show after that.  It FELT better, at the very least - even if I wasn't like, proud of my face.

I've had it to varying degrees on the rest of my body.  It's not usually intolerable, though, unless I'm under a lot of stress, my diet sucks, or it's winter.  There are definitely some things that make it much worse.

For anyone who's curious, psoriasis is not contagious.  Yes, it hurts and itches, and I've been like a lizard in shed for most of my life.  Woo.  There is also an arthritis that comes with it sometimes, which is my current major worry.  But I'm working on that.

The photo on the right is my face right now.  Fresh out of the shower, no make-up, not shooped.

I wish I could just tell you all how I feel about it, but I'm just gonna cry instead.  I have real skin!  There is really real skin on my face.  And it's soft.  And it's not coming off.  And it doesn't hurt.  I think that after all this time I had forgotten that was even a possibility.  I feel really emotional right now.  ❤