the day my face fell off

isn't skin f'ing weird? my whole face is falling off, but not in a cool way. the cool way would be like the praying mantis skin that i found when i was a kid. did you know that they shed their skin like snakes? this specimen was complete, with clearly distinguishable eyes, and even arms in the common praying position replete with hands. it was amazing. i kept it in a glass scientific beaker with a cork stopper on my window sill. also in the bottle was a matching set of monarch butterfly wings i found in my yard, minus the thorax. i also had an identical bottle w/cork next the the first one. this one was filled with my 'baby teeth'. i lost all of them before my 10th birthday. my childhood was cut short in so many ways...

anyway, my face falling off is not nearly as cool looking as the praying mantis sluff that i found. in fact, i look more like a scary homeless man with skin problems and nice clothes. i decided that waiting for it to peel on it's own, and put up with the continued flakey looking skin just wasn't going to cut it for me. so i scrubbed my entire forehead pretty much clean off. my skin is so pink! our clean los angeles air even seems to burn it!

i treated it with some aloe and some sunscreen this morning before i went to work. putting that skit on my face was like jumping into sub-50 degree water [see personally memory entry "I'm a fucking idiot, Jan. '96]. The searing pain and shock my lower epidermis layers were thrown into by applying a natural soothing aloe took the breath out of my lungs and actually had me gripping the sides of the sink for support. it continued to hurt throughout the day, not surprisingly more and more in conjunction with the amount of lead-filled paint-dust the began to stick painfully to my sweating brow.

as it stands now, my face is mostly peeled, though with some clearly more brown areas still present around my hairline and temples. hopefully this won't last too much longer. i just can't stand the thought of being brought to my nears by a helpful bottle of aloe again. it's just to f'ing embarrassing.