Last Updated on 5th May 2020 by Caroline Haye
or does spring bring new hope?
What’s not to love about spring? Blossom is heavy on the trees. Daffodils are blooming in glowing profusion. And images of long, sunny days and lazy, warm evenings are already taking shape in the imagination. (Of course, this being northern Britain, that is where they may well stay. But there is no harm in being optimistic.) I can feel a growing sense of impatience for summer to appear on the shimmering horizon, in all her golden glory… Which is amazing, given that, for most of my adult life, this season filled me with gloom. That may sound strange, but I had good reason to feel that way. And maybe you do too… Does your vitiligo make you dread the sun?
The very prospect of summer and all it entails used to fill me with anxiety and despondency. This is because I knew that I was about to have most of my coping strategies stretched to breaking point on a daily basis. I knew that, for the coming several months, I would need to confront the “thing” that I had been reasonably successful in pushing to the back of my mind all winter long. There would no longer be the reassurance of long sleeves, opaque tights, high necks and scarves. I would soon be flushed out from behind the relative safety of grey days and artificially lit evenings into the unforgiving clarity of the sun… Making it that much harder to make my patchy skin appear normal.
Spring was the start of the vitiligo camouflage season
Not only that, but I knew the hours I would have to spend painstakingly painting out my intricately patterned vitiligo patches with self-tan. I knew this exercise would require me to focus all of my concentration on the very condition I so much wanted to forget. And I knew that if, God forbid, the weather was hot enough to make me perspire all that effort would be undone in no time and my face and body (not to mention my clothes) would all end up various mottled shades of white, brown and orange.
All these considerations – and many more that vitiligo sufferers the world over will instantly recognise – meant that the very season most people greet with such enthusiasm was the most depressing one of all for me, daffodils or no daffodils.
Childhood summers were carefree
I can remember how much I loved warm weather when I was a little girl. But this was long before I knew where the little penny-sized area of white skin on my ankle bone would eventually lead. I was a real Tomboy back then… Spending the seemingly endless, sunny days of childhood either in my brother’s hand-me-down cotton shorts and T-shirts… Climbing trees with the rest of the gang… In a swim suit digging sand castles on the beach… Or daintily dressed in cool, floral-print frocks and sandals with my hair tied up in a pony tail. Like most children, I loved the feeling of freedom that being in the open air and wearing the lightest of clothes brings. And by the end of the summer the only effect of that small ankle patch was to show off how bronzed the rest of me had become.
As my vitiligo spread in later childhood and into adulthood I often looked back wistfully on those carefree summers and envied my younger self. I also had to try hard not to feel jealous of all the people around me. Because their enjoyment of the season had remained undiminished. Their perfect skin seemed to look healthier and more beautiful, the hotter the sun became… Whilst mine did the complete opposite. I can’t honestly say that I always succeeded in keeping that envy at bay. But most of the time I simply hid my negative feelings and turned them inward… Which was probably just as destructive.
I’m not sorry I ever had vitiligo
I do wish now that I had known my vitiligo would not be a life sentence. (Which is how it felt). If I had known I would regain virtually all my lost skin colour later in life and would, once again, view summer as a relaxing and happy season, I might have coped better psychologically. I would not have felt so hopeless.
I realise that many people with vitiligo today have a much more constructive attitude towards it than I did. They don’t obsess over it and they don’t let it spoil their fun, whatever the time of year. Some of them even embrace it.
As it is, I am just very grateful to have had a second chance to enjoy the simple pleasures that this time of year promises… Without the mental baggage that used to come along with it. And, thrilled as I am to be rid of most of my white patches, I don’t regret any of my experiences. I can honestly say that I don’t wish I had never had vitiligo because I think it taught me compassion. I do wish there was no such thing as vitiligo because then no one would have it! But, given that it does exist, I know that it has ultimately made me a stronger, more empathetic and more appreciative person. And, all things considered, I think that those characteristics are far more important to me – and, I hope to others I come into contact with – than having perfect skin 🙂
For information on how sunshine affect vitiligo, see Is Sunshine Good For Vitiligo?
