Emotional Level

[Guest guest]

Hi

The e-mail arrived just before I hit the bed last night at 2am. Suffice to

say your question occupied my brain for a few further hours, before I nodded

off.

Emotions are akin to pain, you cannot touch them, see them, taste them, hear

them, or smell them, but they are there! As with pain, they can disable you,

or put you on a high!

I recall my initial visit to the Dermatology clinic in England, I was 17. As

it was a clinic, well all the patients had stages of psoriasis, the worst

back to me, I thought I was mild in comparison. I came home feeling suicidal

and remember saying to myself, 'if it breaks out on my face, I will take

suicide!'. Yes a few tears were shed, enough to fill a swimming pool. Now I

never considered myself to be a fashionable, attractive female, the runt of

the litter more like, so this reaction itself upset me. The taunting,

sympathy, comments also upset me, so I decided to lay down a law for myself:

never judge people, we are all human. Odd because I caught myself looking at

other humans with skin blemishes, birthmarks and would hear myself saying,

'That looks horrific'. It was then I realised humans have this judgmental

streak in their character, its Nature! Trying not to be judgmental is HARD,

as from the moment we are born we are judged. " Gillian why did you not do

your homework, Gillian came top of the class, Gillian is wearing Versatchi "

Even our mentors lashed it out, " Gillian if you are good you will go to

heaven, if you are bad well its hell " So we grow up trying to please our

mentors, because if we please them, they reward us.

Psoriasis is not a pleasing sight for anyone, let alone the parents who gave

birth to us, want us to be perfect. In my twenties, I suddenly realised that

my fellow workers, who felt they were in competition with me, would always

try and knock me down by USING my one flaw, my psoriasis! Yes it is a

competitive world and if you keep your head to the grindstone, produce

flawless work, well what else can they aim there judgmental hatred at? So if

the Psoriatic lesions are not THICK enough, well you learn to grow a thick

skin, sorry for the pun.

This change of 'thinking' because that is what it is, again does not come

easy. You can allow people to taunt you, walk away, but in reality you are

loosing what self esteem you have left. Once your self esteem vanishes, well

then the depression takes hold, you start to 'think' that they are right!

Me I just kept thinking that me fellow humans were ignorant and that showed

in there reactions to my psoriasis. Thankfully I have education, the ability

to read, and often spent time in the local library. However they believe

they have finished with school, learning and education, but life itself is a

learning curve. I often wonder how those judgmental people are handling the

Internet, let alone other events that have taken place in their lives.

I did return a few years ago. My colleague , who was instigating an

affair with a married man, with a family, had just survived a miscarriage.

Suffice to say the shoe was now firmly on the other foot, her expectations

in life had been shattered and was NOT handling the situation too

well. Perhaps if I had wanted vengeance, I could have been cruel to her, but

in my mind, what goes out, always comes back.

[ was the girl who asked me how men felt about having sex with me

because of my mangy skin, did it turn them off rather than turn them on!]

Love and God Bless

Gillian