I am 26 and from India and I am just tired. Tired in the bones and tired in the mind. My skin is not a few pimples. It is a full time problem. My chest and back and shoulders and stomach are covered in thick keloids and deep scars and active acne that keeps coming. Sometimes when I wake up the wounds are stuck to the bedsheet and when I turn they tear open and there is blood and fluid. I do not even react now. I just peel myself off the bed and start the day. Pain has become normal and that is the worst part.

I finished law in 2023. I started practice in Madras High Court. I really thought that would be my life. Going to court, drafting, arguing, building a name. But every day in court was a fight with my own body. Formal shirts rubbing against open lesions. Tight collars making me sweat and sweat burning every small wound. Sitting on wooden benches with my back full of keloids pressing against the seat. I would sit straight and rigid just so my shirt would not scrape my skin. I was bleeding under my ironed clothes and still pretending to be fine. After some time it was not possible. I stopped going. Not because my mind was weak. My body simply refused.

Then I joined LLM in 2024. For a few months it felt like I got a second life. I had classmates. I joked with them. I drank chai in the canteen. I stayed late for assignments. I started to feel like a normal young guy again not a patient. Then the big flare came and by May 2025 I had to discontinue that too. Same story again. Pain. Ointments. Tablets. No sleep. Again life paused.

About hospitals I need to say this clearly. I do not allow anybody to come with me now. In the beginning I tried. I took my parents. I took my girlfriend. I took my friends. They saw cryotherapy burning my keloids. They saw the needles going in for steroid injections. They saw the doctor pressing and freezing and cutting small areas. They saw the blood and the smell of chemicals and the machines. And after the treatment when my skin was on fire they were the ones crying and shaking. I was the one sitting there with fresh pain telling them it is okay do not cry I am fine. I realized I was getting treatment and at the same time I had to emotionally hold them. That was too much. So I decided it is easier to go alone. At least then I only have to manage my own pain not their fear.

My parents did not deserve this shock. They raised me like a prince. They bought me what I asked. They imagined a normal future. Then suddenly they saw my body changing into something they did not recognize. My mother started going to temples and praying. She does not understand medical names and protocols. All she knows is that her son is suffering and she cannot take it away. My father is the kind of man who never cries in front of anyone. But for me I have seen him break silently. The way his eyes turn away when I undress. The way he waits outside the doctor room. The way he breathes heavier when the doctor explains long term treatment and side effects. They are both carrying this with me but they cannot fix it. That helplessness is killing them.

My sister once told me something that still sits in my head. She told me why are you burying your girlfriend’s life also first you have to become healthy and then you have to start a new life. When she said it it felt like a slap. But I know why she said it. She has watched everything from the front row. She saw me start my practice and leave it. She saw me join LLM and discontinue. She saw me wake up in pain and walk with stiff movements. She saw me spend most of my time applying creams and taking tablets and going to hospitals. In her mind she is scared that my girlfriend will also get tied to this cycle of hospitals and expenses and cancellations and pain. She is not trying to be cruel. She is trying to protect both of us in her own way. But her words still cut my self respect. Because when someone says that you feel like your existence itself is a burden on people you love. That sentence from her is one of the reasons I started seeing myself as a problem instead of a person.

This disease changed my character more than my face. Before all this I was neat and sharp. I spoke clearly. I had self respect and I did not bend too much for anyone. I was the type who had a straight spine in personality. Slowly everything got edited. First I became quiet. Then I became too careful. Then I turned into someone who says sorry for things that are not even my fault. I started tolerating things that the old me would never accept. When every day is a physical fight with your own skin you do not have extra energy to fight with people. So when someone hurts you you let it go. When someone talks roughly you stay calm. When you are misunderstood you do not clear it because even opening that topic will take emotional energy which you don’t have. You start shrinking so that you do not lose the few people who are still around you. You start thinking if they go also what is left. So you adjust beyond your limit. You twist yourself into shapes that do not match who you truly are. That is how pain slowly eats your character.

I miss the old version of myself. Not because he was perfect but because he had dignity. Now I am softer and more scared. I hold people tightly because I am afraid of being left alone again. I cannot say no easily. I cannot draw lines clearly. Chronic pain did not just damage my skin. It slowly melted my boundaries.

Then there is my girlfriend. I want to write about her without filter. She is not some bad omen in my life. She did not come and destroy anything. The truth is everything was already crumbling. She just walked in while it was happening. She is a good hearted girl with her own madness and spark. She is not some delicate saint. She has a fun wild side especially when we are alone and that is actually one of the reasons I fell for her so hard. In a life full of hospitals and medicines she is the only person who made me feel like an actual man and not a case file. When she is playful in bed when she teases and pulls me close when she kisses me like she actually wants me and not some cleaned up version of me that is when I forget I am sick. Those moments are small but they are the only times my body is associated with something other than pain. She loves me with her whole heart and whatever happens in future that love from my side will not switch off. It is not based on convenience.

Recently I joined Axis Bank as a deputy manager. Everyone around me said congrats and good going and life is back on track. From outside it looks like that. But from inside it is still the same body coming home every day. The same scars. The same burning. The same restless nights. Getting a job did not suddenly heal anything. I am thankful for the work but my health did not change because my designation changed.

Now I am planning for more treatment. ER YAG laser. CO2 laser. Keloid injections. Maybe another round of isotretinoin. I honestly do not know what will happen. I am not dreaming of a movie level clear skin. I just want to experience one simple thing that others take for granted. Lying down on a bed in any position and falling asleep without pain.

My daily routine will sound very small but it tells the whole story. I wake up. I go to the bathroom slowly. I bathe carefully so the water does not sting too much. I come out and apply ointments all over the areas that are hurting or infected. I take my tablets. I eat something. Not because I am hungry but because I have to eat with medicines. Then I mostly sit or lie down and use my phone. I scroll online. I watch random things. From outside it looks like laziness but actually it is just no energy and no motivation. Most days I do nothing big. Just existing itself is effort. Some days I simply hate life quietly not in a dramatic way just a tired kind of hate.

In the evening I talk with my girlfriend. For that little time I feel slightly normal because I am listening to her stories and telling mine and I am not fully inside my own head. After that night routine starts. Again I bathe because sweat makes my skin worse. Again I apply creams and ointments layer after layer. Again I take night tablets. Then I lie down on the bed and the long struggle begins. I turn to the left and it hurts. I turn to the right and it pulls. I lie on my back and it burns. I lie on my chest and it cracks. So I keep rotating not searching for sleep but searching for a position with slightly less pain. Sometimes I see the clock hit 3 am 4 am 5 am and I am still half awake half exhausted. Then morning comes and the same cycle repeats.

I am not writing this to ask anyone what should I do next or to hear be strong bro or this too shall pass. I am writing because I want at least one place where my full story exists without me editing it to make others comfortable. I am just a man whose body became his whole life. That is all.

When Your Own Body Becomes the Hardest Part of Life – 26M India”