I don’t know exactly what caused it, but the spread make it seem fungal. Sv3rige guessed that it was candida, and it did sort of feel like a candida die-off, but it also felt like I was detoxing antihistamines.

So I got to Florida and immediately I started sunbathing, my body wanted it. The southern Florida sun is incredibly strong, especially for me, a Washingtonian. My skin became unrecognizably dark, and I was insecure. I didn’t recognize my face in the mirror and my dark circles got worse.

I could only have sex in the dark. I felt like an insecure teenager again. Then it happened… the hives. I hate hives. They’re incredibly itchy and for me, disfiguring. My skin, head-to-toe, was covered in itchy, sweaty hives. With the increasing humidity, my sweat wouldn’t evaporate, so all that toxic stuff sat on and irritated my skin. I scratched in my sleep and of course it got worse.

It took me finally leaving Naples for the hives to stop. My eyes were swollen, my skin dark and dirty and my confidence lower than any point in my life ever. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. He told me I was autistic. I told him I was insecure about my skin.

If you’ve never had autoimmune disease, especially one that is so heavily appearance-based, you can’t understand how desperate you become. Desperate for a cure, desperate to look and feel normal, desperate to be beautiful.

I don’t have the strength to look at myself in the mirror. The hives have left discolored purple patches all over my body. I want nothing more but to go back to cold and darkness. It must be the fungus talking.

You see, fungi hate sunlight and heat so when I got here out of the cold, they waged war on my skin. They fought for their life here, and they died. What’s on my skin now is nothing but battle scars.

I pray that I heal from this. Or maybe I have to accept that my skin will be like this forever. I’ll never be the same, regardless.