I was supposed to start a tiny letter with my sister but she claims to be uninspired so I’m just putting my eczema story here instead. Emily sent me her summer playlist as consolation.
My eczema origin story is that one summer growing up, I was in Los Angeles at the pool and got a terrible sunburn. It was the kind that blisters and peels and heats up your whole body like a fever. I think my mother submerged me in a cold bath just to get my body temperature down. It felt like the time I had the flu when I was a young child and my fever was so high I hallucinated a person walking into my room. High on my flu fever I had watched the movie Oklahoma!, an utterly terrifying movie in my delirious memory.
Anyway, after the sunburn, I had recurring eczema for years, horrifying flakey patches on my inner arms and between my fingers and along my neck. I developed a strict skincare routine early on in life because of the eczema. I started moisturizing obsessively, using heavy unscented lotion, an…