My hands started up again last night around 2am and I’ve been awake since, just lying there trying not to scratch. I’ve got three weddings in the next 6 weeks, my niece’s is October 17th, and I already know I’m going to be the one at the reception in long sleeves in the middle of a heatwave, hoping nobody asks why.
The commute isn’t helping. Ninety minutes each way, both directions, 5 days a week, and by the time I get home there’s nothing left in me to actually take care of myself with. I thought the garden would be my quiet place this year. Put in tomatoes and perilla and some peppers back in spring, and for a while that hour out there really was the one part of the day where I wasn’t thinking about my skin at all. Then the flare came up around both wrists, from the soil or the heat or who even knows anymore, and now even that got taken from me a little.
I keep telling myself I’m just starting to learn how to actually sit with this instead of losing it every time it flares, but some nights I don’t feel like I’m learning a single thing. I’m 54 years old and still losing it over the exact same thing I was losing it over years ago. Some nights I could just scream, honestly! My husband asked if he should grab the antihistamines from the cabinet and I just said no and turned over, which wasn’t fair to him, but I didn’t have it in me right then to explain that it wasn’t really about the itching.
The weddings are what’s actually eating at me if I’m honest. Nobody’s said a word to me about it, nobody at all. It’s that I catch myself planning an outfit 3 weeks out like it’s a military operation, sleeves, fabric, whether the venue will even have air conditioning, instead of just being happy for these girls I watched grow up. Already bought a gift for the first one. Still haven’t RSVPed to the second because part of me is hoping the flare settles before I have to commit to anything.
I don’t need anyone to tell me what to put on it or how to handle the stress better. I’ve read all of that a hundred times over. I just needed to get this out somewhere instead of carrying it around all day at work and on that ninety minute ride home, staring out the window like everything’s fine.