My skin is not my own. If it were mine it would go unchanged, hold tight to the form I adore, it wouldn’t crinkle or wrinkle or sag with ease.

But in truth my skin has already shown the tell tale signs of ware, it has age spots, wrinkles , lines and sags. Despite all my lotions and potions and exercises and machines, the skin has assumed a shape I so not adore. All it took was excess heat, excess facial expressions, not enough moisture, the force of gravity, 4e toxins in the environment and my skin has become old looking.

At the very least, if my skin were truly mine it would protect me. It would do the job it was evolutionarily designed for and keep me safe. It would honor my intentions toward health and my efforts at care. Instead the very skin I need to keep me safe has begun to redden and change, become a sore, shift into a state that could be cancerous.

If the skin were mine I could order it to maintain a certain, youthful and healthful state. But precisely because the skin can fail to keep me safe — may actually expose me to cancer and infection — it is clearly not mine to claim I control.

Is the skin constant or inconstant? Clearly it is inconstant. It changes texture, look, color. It becomes blotchy, wrinkled, it has begun to sag. Worst of all, it can become infected. The cells can change and mutate in ways that are dangerous and can spread –it can become cancerous.

Is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful? Oh the skin is a continual source of stress fro me. I stress about how it looks. How it feels. I stress about how others will judge me based on it. About how I judge myself. I look in the mirror and my skin makes be feel shame some of the time.

What is worse is the stress, the physical pain, when my skin becomes sick. I have been stressed about my changing mole for weeks now. I stress and feel anxious right now as I await the biopsy results.

There was the stress about my nose spots being cancer. Stress when my rosacea itches and burns and looks like shit. Stress I might get a cold sore before a important event. Stress that time in highschool I got a huge infected abscess on my face. Stress when I need to find a new dermatologist when I move, someone who I can trust with my face. Stress and deep sorrow when I couldn’t get botox over the pandemic, I couldn’t get in for fillers soon enough after it ended. Stress that people, by seeing my skin would see my weakness and inability to control my body. Like my face was a sign of my diseased self.

And is it fitting to regard that which is inconstant, stressful and subject to change as this is mine, this is myself, this is who I am?

Here are my thoughts on this issue: Sometimes the skin has a form I like and at other times it has a form I don’t like. A form that can put me in danger. If I claim the skin as me, as mine, don’t I need to claim both times? And do I really think something I don’t like, something that embarassaes me, something that can kill me, can deprive me of a life with all I have worked so hard for, all I love, is mine? It clearly doesn’t represent me. It clearly doesn’t act solely to my benefit and in my interest. How do I justify claiming it as mine?

Eventually this skin will slough off my body, rot, return to the earth. It is merely a consumable good. Something used for a time. It is already showing the signs of being consumed/ altered and used up: Rosacea is from my skin being consumed by mites. The wrinkles arise because my own body has consumed my collagen stores and because I have consumed toxins that accumulate in my body and shift the cellular forms. Acne is consumption by bacteria. And cancer is my body’s cells shifting form in response to 4es in my body, in the environment and growing as healthy skin cells are consumed by altered ones.  If one part of my body is a consumable, isn’t all of it?

If It is just something to use. To use up. How do I think this skin will follow my rules, be altered, preserved, shift on my terms? Does 4es in the world obey my terms? If it is for use, it is usable sometimes in some circumstances. What object in this world is usable all the time, in all circumstances?

Considering the extreme stress caused by my claiming my skin. Caused by my deep desire to depend on something that definitionally is a ‘sometimes’. Considering that the kin, this body, acts and shifts and changes along independent of my claim or my stress.. Aren’t I truly suffering for free?