Lips - 10/13/2025

My lips bled today. For the first time in years, close to a decade even, they bled. I can vividly remember the pain my lips caused me in my youth. The physical, of course, but more painful was the emotional burden. I saw allopathic doctors in the US, in New York City (according to my mother) but I don’t really remember those transits, aside from one. I saw Ayurvedic doctors in India, there was one who prescribed me a series of foul tasting pills and powders, each to be taken at a certain time in the day. I was inconsistent with all my medications. I was a child. The topical steroids applied on my lips were eaten, so that was a no go. My alarms would be turned off, and I couldn’t be trusted to take my pills on time. 

The lack of treatment led to years of bleeding, and scratching. I couldn’t keep my fingernails away from them. There was something soothing about raking the earth barren, pulling off the freshly fallen leaves and releasing the inflamed lava underneath. 

With an imperfect understanding of how to retain their original shape, my lips healed in whatever ways they could. By the time I learned to simply coat them in petroleum, fossil based, minerals formed from the prehistoric periods of the earth’s past, they had healed in a botched, patchwork kind of manner. They were irregularly blotchy, uneven, and discolored. 

The emotional impact of grotesque and macabre lips was that they stood out like a sore thumb (terrible euphemism by the way). I would get constant and incessant questions about my lips. The children were fine, I could tolerate their curiosity and did not take their lack of empathy personally. The adults, on the other hand, asked in such a way that made my blood boil. The only worse slight was by a peer in the 10th grade, when they used it as the brunt of an insult. 

Throughout my entire life, my lips have only ever caused me pain and anguish. However, I learned to live with them. We learned to coexist. I even at one point wore them proudly. In college, I stopped receiving questions and concerns, and my lips and I had a truly wonderful time. For such a significant period of time in my life, I forgot about them. 

However, today, they bled for the first time. In the same way that they released once again their spoils from the earth, the past flooded in with them. I felt disgust and shame at the state of my lips. I once again started seeing doctors. Over the course of half a month, I was once again plunged back into the world I had forgotten. Now they are beginning to heal again. They just needed moisture. Over the summer, I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to continue taking care of them and that everything would be okay. However, I realize that I will have to care for them for the rest of my life, in simple ways. I don’t know if I hate my lips… but I do know they are something I have to learn to live with.