More Than Skin Deep

I spent part of my winter break on a six-day mindfulness retreat hosted by the Center for Wellness. It was spent mostly in silence, and with no friends and no phone. I found myself with ample time to reflect on my first semester and the kind of person I wanted to become during my stay in Harvardland. By night one, though, my welcome escape from the stressors of the real world was shattered. I had an eczema flareup.

I was born with moderate to severe eczema, and with the help of my mother and a rotation of lackluster dermatologists, I have managed to survive and keep it from getting to the point of infection — but that’s about it. I avoid the foods my allergist says to avoid, I always have some moisturizer with me, and I’ve never worn a piece of polyester clothing in my life. I buy dye-free detergent, try experimental treatments from time to time, and am still largely at the mercy of my immune system. Are my assignments overwhelming me? Is it a bit too humid out? My skin can tell you an astonishing amount about how the world is treating me at any given moment. At the slightest inconvenience, an itch begins deep within my bones. This itch has been compared to a bout of severe poison ivy, but that’s just not true — poison ivy does not last a lifetime, for one thing. Scratching sporadically throughout the day, and especially while sleeping, is a genuinely unavoidable, reflex-like reality for eczema sufferers.

The itch was not what made the flareup on the retreat particularly painful, nor was it the aching in the backs of my knees that followed. What pained me most was the realization that I didn’t need to spend six days in the Massachusetts wilderness, silent and sans phone, to feel isolated. The most isolating part of my existence was laid out right in front of me, in the form of bed sheets covered in my own blood and dead skin.

My skin forced me to grow up in isolation. I had to watch, alone, as other elementary schoolers took one look at me and stepped back in silent disgust, afraid I was suffering from something contagious. I listened, still alone, as adults condescendingly explained my own affliction to me, offering up rudimentary and unsolicited advice that I’d quite literally been following since infancy. This got better as I got older and grew into myself, gaining probably a little too much confidence to overcompensate for my skin. The people I’d always gone to school with got used to my eczema, and by the time I graduated high school, it had become one of the least interesting things about me (thanks for that one, Harvard).

But now I’m in a new place, without a single person I knew during the first eighteen years of my life. I meet new people every single day and rarely do they manage not to react to the redness and scaliness of my hand before shaking it. I walk through the Yard and pretend not to notice as passersby examine my forearms and neck with curious faces. I make up for it all by dressing and acting ridiculously over-the-top, doing anything to distract people from my worst and most noticeable trait. I’m so accustomed to trying to be anything other than The One With The Skin Thing that I often forget how lonely this experience is, and how emotionally exhausting it is to never quite feel like I can fully be myself even when I’m in the company of close friends and family.

I’m often told that my eczema is a minor problem, and any emotions surrounding it are invalid because, in the wise words of Kourtney Kardashian, “there’s people that are dying.” Life at Harvard has proven to me, though, that my skin is just the tip of the iceberg. As I return to a world with eczema at the forefront, I’ve come to understand that it will be like this for the rest of my life. So, I don’t want you to imagine yourself in my skin or feel bad for me because it is mine. I just want you to listen to me as I tell you what it’s like to live with this, never quite escaping the isolation that comes with it.

Carmine J. Passarella ’23 lives in Matthews Hall.