01/09/2026
Will someone ever love the skin I’ve spent years trying to accept?
Hi! My name is Nistha nistha_bhararia 🇮🇳
I wanted to share my story.
I’ve been living with psoriasis since I was in Class 9. It’s been 9 years.
Before every trip or gathering, I find myself standing in front of the mirror, applying ointments. Not to heal my skin, but to hide it. It disappears just long enough for everyone else, never for me.
People think it’s just a skin condition, but they don’t realize how much it changes you as a person. Every time someone sees my skin, they have a remedy, a doctor, a medicine, or a treatment to suggest. I know they mean well, but after years of visiting doctors, I’ve accepted something they keep telling me—there’s no permanent cure.
What people don’t see is the mental side of it. The overthinking before wearing certain clothes. The embarrassment when someone stares. The constant feeling that your skin is the first thing people notice about you.
My psoriasis isn’t just on my elbows or knees. It’s on my scalp, eyelids, forehead, armpits, knees, elbows, most of my lower body, and even my cleavage. Some days, I don’t feel like looking at myself.
In India, visible scars become everyone’s concern, but the invisible ones are ignored. No one talks about how exhausting it is to live in a body you’re constantly told to fix.
One fear I don’t talk about enough is intimacy. Everyone wants a “perfect” girl with flawless skin. I’m scared of being physically close to someone because I keep thinking, what if he sees my skin and judges me? What if it hurts more than everything I’ve already been through?
I’ve spent so much of my life wishing I had different skin. Now, after 9 years, I’m just trying to make peace with the one I have.
I don’t want sympathy. I just want people to understand that psoriasis is so much more than what they see.