Vitiligo|PTSD; A Personal Tale

Vitiligo|PTSD

And I carry you like warpaint
You remind me of every war I fought
Every mirror holds a million tradgedies

And I carry you like warpaint
You remind me of every war I survived
Every mirror holds a million memories

And I carry you like warpaint
you remind me of the past
every mirror holds a million thoughts

And I carry you like warpaint
You remind me of fear
Every mirror holds a child that did not want to fight

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As I have learned to engage with the concept of writing, and as I’ve lectured people about keeping and entailing a habit, I came to realize that I have to further push my boundaries.

I believe that at this point I did offer quite a lot of insight into my world without really saying much. I deliberately try to avoid deep personal reflections because I think the arts should be subjectively relatable. Giving too much input molds and shapes something that should, at least for me, be experienced.
What good would stories of heartbreak and pain be if my goal was to awake emotions and reactions within the reader? I do not want you to feel me per se, I want you to introject your own world into it.

Well… today, this will change a bit.

I wrote a little something about a very personal subject of my vitiligo – a rather rare skin condition that accompanies me throughout my whole life.

I remember sitting in class, looking at my hands and seeing that some odd white patches were developing on my hand. I used to take a pen and draw a circle around the first dot that appeared.
It never occurred to me that both my parents have it aswell. I reckon that being around something all the time does make you blind to it…

I get occasional comments about it, especially during summer. My fav ones are a good mixture between being a burn victim and getting asked if I was on a ski vacation. it doesn’t bother me much really nor do I need comforting for it. For me, it’s just a matter I cannot change, so I will not worry about it much.

Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about it which then led me to write some sort of a self-reflective poem.

Just so you understand the given circumstances, I’ll break my vows and give you a little insight into the world I call mine. I will not give you a long intro into autoimmune diseases and what they entail and so on and so forth since, let’s be real, I only understand half of it. What I can tell you though is that stress is really not beneficial when it comes to dermatological problems. The root of this poem is that my vitiligo outbreak got way worse after some stressful times. (Funnily enough, right when I started writing. What a fun coping mechanism. Say no to drugs, kids.)

I started to develop it more and more. Half my face is at this point covered or well uncovered by now. My beard is getting that gray touch as well, and it slowly creeps around.

A further interesting little fact is that I actually have ADD
(You may have heard the terms ADD and ADHD used interchangeably. Attention-deficit disorder (ADD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are indeed the same conditions, it’s just that ADHD has had several name changes in the last three decades. As far as I know, it has been classified as a spectrum with 7 to 8 subcategories which all have different characteristics. To add some more fun into it, you often have more than 1 subcategory. (A nice cocktail of confusion)
I will definitely write a blogpost about ADD and just what it meant to me, but to wrap this post up I would like to tell you about my personal
experiences and how they led to this poem.
ADD is often associated with hyperactivity and restlessness, which inevitably also entail the mental part of your body. You can guess where this is creeping towards. You do not get mental breaks really. Your mind is racing all the time. You don’t have more than 6 hours of sleep and nor do you get restful sleep. Your mind thinks of a thousand things at once just to forget half of them again.

But Davide how does this relate to stress. I mean, if you have enough distraction wouldn’t that be great.

Well, you would assume so, right? Here is where the fun part comes in. Some maniac thought it would be a splendid idea to balance out ADD. And by balancing out I mean the concept of hyperfocus. Your best friend and your worst ally.

Hyperfocus is the experience of deep and intense concentration in some people with ADHD. ADHD is not necessarily a deficit of attention, but rather a problem with regulating one’s attention span to desired tasks. So, while mundane tasks may be difficult to focus on, others may be completely absorbing.

Losing yourself in thought and really focusing on certain aspects can really stress you out. I will leave it at that. Thank you for reading what I put out here I really do appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. It took me over a year to even start a blog and I am really grateful for every single person that reads what we put out here. I love you guys .

https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-symptoms-hyperfocus#2

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