Winter, You Stupid, Nasty B-tch

Dear Winter, You’re a stupid nasty bitch. And no, not for the reasons you think I’m writing this. This isn’t about the shit tons of snow you shat all over the city, the slush you leave behind that makes walking down the stairs to the subway treacherous, or the ice you scatter on the most improbable surfaces, like the railings on the stairs leading down to the subway making it impossible to commute without playing a fun game of Russian Roulette: Siberia edition.

This is about my skin.

My skin, admittedly, has never been the best. As a teenager it was the worst. I had the red, pulsating, cystic kind that loving spread itself all over my face. It was only at 16 that I got on that miracle drug Accutane that worked its wonders right before I headed off to college.

Nowadays, post-Accutane honeymoon phase has ended and my skin now gets the occasional breakout, typically near my period. However it’s calmed itself enough that I can get away with a daily face wash and the occasional dab of acne cream mixed with a once a week mask if I’m feeling up to it.

But I didn’t write this to list my favorite skin products or talk about how my skin routine is, like, the best ever.

I wrote this to vent. About Winter.

You see, Winter is a stupid slut because she just had to affect every aspect of my life, giving me SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and then that bitch went for the fucking jugular. My skin.

Winter has made my skin the most unpleasant of all. It is dry, flaky, oily, and, best of all, pimply. Yes. The trifecta. No trifecta has been this deadly since my teenage trifecta of glasses, acne, and baby fat.

It is dry for many reasons all of which are Winter’s fault. The frigid temperatures are a shock to my system, or any red-blooded mammal’s, when I step outside. The howling wind brings the temperature down from a balmy 20 degrees F to a soul crushing 3 degrees. This lovely weather is only brought to you during the few hours of bright sunlight. After dark it is literally a suicide mission to leave a warm enclosure for any reason other than going home to your warm bed, alcohol, or on your way to fuck someone awesome (which is how you know when someone is worth it, especially if the first two are not involved in the latter).

But yes. That brings me to flip side of this ungodly cold. It is unfair of Winter to presume that just because she graces us with her presence that we won’t try to remedy her frigidness with warm. It is literally a survival tactic. So the radiator tries to drown out the howling wind with its incessant rattling, bringing my tiny apartment up to 58 degrees F with which I must supplement with my remote controlled space heater. You would think that all this heat plus my bed covered in no less than seven blankets would make it better. You think, hey, dry flaky skin sucks but like it’s not something that some moisturizer wouldn’t fix.

How naïve.

Turns out that the combination of bitter cold and dry heat produces the most amazing of reactions, but none as great as a fucking excess of oil on my face and my scalp. Just because that fucker is covered in hair (my scalp, not my face, although give it two weeks who the hell knows anymore) does not mean that it isn’t skin and won’t go about sprouting oil whenever it damn feels like. However my scalp isn’t always this temperamental, THAT BITCH PROVOKED IT. Which leaves me, for those of you keeping count, with dry flaky skin and greasy oily hair.

So while I go about lounging in my onesie to stave off hypothermia, my body is producing BP levels of oil leaving me no choice but to exfoliate, moisturize, repeat. Only this leads to the most fun of all: weather induced acne. Acne that if you try to treat it with say everything in your medicine cabinet, your roommate’s secret stash, half of all the Duane Reades, Sephora, Lush, and anything else you can afford with your meager paycheck that is no longer going towards the alcohol you so desperately need, it will dig in its heels and start colonizing your entire face.

Which is where I stand now, with swollen red bumps, dry lifeless flakes of skin still clinging to the face that was once at least presentable, and oil randomly swamping the craters that used to be pores. My skin can now be mistaken for the mumps, which, let me tell you, is not a great boost for my social life. Neither is my greasy hair that now requires me to shower twice a day, resulting in drier, oilier, more bump covered skin. Winter, I know I’m calling you a stupid bitch but it is only because YOU HAVE RUINED ME AND MY LIFE WHICH WAS NOT A FUCKING PICNIC TO BEGIN WITH.

I don’t want anyone’s pity though. I am not writing for someone to tell me what I am doing wrong, what I should be doing or trying or buying or where I should be moving to because I am fucking spent. I know who did this and I am holding that bitch Winter accountable. Go the fuck away. You are not welcome here anymore. Haven’t you done enough? You have spent my paycheck on useless products, used up most of my waking hours rotating between fury and wasted optimism, as well as all of my makeup. Which is not cheap.

You win, Winter. I give the fuck up. It has been months, you’ve done all the damage there is to do (PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME REGRET THAT STATEMENT) and rendered me lifeless and soulless. What is there to look forward to anymore? I can’t recall what warm weather feels like. My skin is a dead beaten carcass. You have skillfully tortured me this year winter. I have nothing left for you to mercilessly torture me with.

So I say again.

Winter. You are a nasty bitch.

Go the fuck away.