I was tired of the flame from my pocket lighter singeing my eyelashes, but I held my hand steady until all of the cysts on my jaw were burnt to a crisp. My lashes would be regrown in moments and be even fuller than before. The pain from the fire always gave me a start at first, but I’d done this so many times that the burning area went numb fast enough to bear. Something about reaching the nerves under the skin if you hold your hand steady enough. I lowered the lighter, still grasped with three fingers, and peered into the mirror. The cooked skin of my jaw was already wriggling. I stared into a small, round, magnifying mirror for the next ten minutes until my jawline was freshly turned over, with more pigment than the rest of my face for now, and the cysts and red bumps did not immediately reappear. At this stage, I kept hoping that each treatment could be my last, and my skin would function properly and heal over everything, with my conditions never to return. Fire is the best healing element of all, and luckily it is a resource whose tools, such as lighters and fuel, hadn’t had their prices jacked up to exploit the common person, because fire can be made with a variety of things and at home.

            With my new skin still bright, I walked into the kitchen in search of food. My mom greeted me and did not make a face about the state of mine. Today, she did not comment on the high pigmentation of my scars or a large bump in the middle of my cheek, because for now there were no such things. I had done a full neck and face burn last night and slept in fresh bandages. My jaw was always more of a problem, because even if the cysts were not very noticeable, they burned like the flame from my hand at a gentle touch. A quick Monday-morning lighter run would do the trick for now. Sometimes it is more effective to do treatments in quick succession.

“Good morning, you’re glowing more today.” Mom said with her back to me as she made eggs on the stove.
“Thank you, I burned my skin again this morning, so it’s fresher than usual.” I replied.
“It seems to be working right this time,” she said, pleased.

I had a cup of green tea and took vitamin supplements with breakfast, for the promotion of skin health, and went to school. Throughout the week I did everything I was supposed to: I used acidic facewash and bodywash, showered regularly and after working out, kept my hair clean of products and off my forehead, avoided touching my face with unclean hands, and wore fresh clothing every day and night to sleep in on fresh pillowcases. I made sure my room temperature wouldn’t be too hot from under covers and tried my best to soothe any anxiety before sleep to avoid sweating. I tried not to stare at the glass-like reflections of light off the foreheads and cheekbones of my classmates who had skin as clear as day.

One afternoon, my mom brought in a package from the mail and opened it on the counter.
“Oh, these are for you to try. It’s benzoyl peroxide, stronger than salicylic acid, so it should do more for your skin.” She handed my two bottles of a whiteish face wash.
“Oh, okay. Thank you.”

I started the new cleanser that night and made sure to moisturize. Stronger means it dries you out more.

Even though fire generally does a good job with healing wounds and refreshing skin afflicted with any ailment, you unfortunately are not supposed to do it all the time. The nerves and any affected muscle need extra time to regrow even if the top skin looks good, and it’s healthy to let any peach fuzz hair grow back where it needs to so it can do its protective job. In between burnings, you are meant to use normal washes and such.

As anyone who has rotated many kinds of the skin washes or treatments will know, there is an adjustment period where your skin gets used to the product and might get worse for a while, up to several months, which is referred to as purging. This can be a tough time to get over if your skin doesn’t behave, like mine. The following weeks I kept my head down at school, hiding the really bad spots. It hurt to smile or move my brow muscles. The cysts form behind my ears and on my back, making sleeping painful even after I’ve washed all the skin I can reach. If I cave and pick at the painful bumps, the acidic facewash burns me. I’d prefer fire because I can see the results immediately.

One morning, I woke and wandered to the bathroom to check my face and found in horror that it was peeling. This could be part of the purge. I couldn’t be seen with my skin falling off my face in public. I drew a large lighter from the bathroom cabinet drawer and held it at a slight distance. The flame made my flaking skin burn into dust, but the prolonged heat exposure dried out any areas that weren’t already lifting off their underlayers. It was like ashes, all falling into the sink. The peeliness was gone, but it uncovered the still-forming, deep pustules beneath. I held in a sob. This was better than trailing defective skin cells everywhere, I suppose. Mom shot me a look at the table that morning but held back any comments. She was doing her best to try to help. I didn’t know how to say that I was feeling defeated by the very thing meant to protect me from the world. Instead, my skin was a book of my insecurities, so everyone could tell when I might be stressed or sad by observing the spreading bumps. It’s not my mom’s fault I still don’t know how to ask for help.

Instead of asking her for advice, I took to my phone and photo sharing apps. There were people who claimed more frequent skin burning was better for you and helped them achieve their perfect complexions, and there were also people who claimed they didn’t burn their faces at all to get rid of skin conditions but stuck to less destructive methods like only using water to wash their face and cutting sugar and milk from their diets. Photo filters were common on faces from both crowds. There were posts about “magic” drinks that could fix you from the inside out, and pills that brought the fire under your skin to bring the fight on site. It never occurred to me that my parents might see these methods as necessary, not because they didn’t care but because I had never asked, and so these solutions floated through my mind as intangible and almost too good to be true. I looked for do-it-yourself face mask recipes with honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, turmeric, avocado, various plant, and seed oils. I would spend many evenings simmering over skin treatment ideas with result pictures that were airbrushed but that I didn’t notice. I would sneak downstairs and make a bowl of one of these mixes when I should be resting and apply it like this could be my only chance to fix something. Turmeric and cinnamon burned worse than any fire. Often-regenerated skin is not tough. I would cave and wash the sludge off my face when the stinging was too much, and go to bed burnt out, disappointed. I took a lighter to my skin whenever I could, holding it to neck, back, T-zone. Perhaps the feeling of real fire became a way to cope. My stress over the persistence of the bumps made the clearness last for fewer and fewer days. It became hard to distinguish between the totally scarred surfaces of faces on people on the internet with my own face that was admittedly not as badly pockmarked. My smoldering urgency told me any bumps or visible pores were just the same as cystic masses.

This lasted for months. I would fall down “skincare” rabbit holes often and feel worse each time. I felt a pressure to cover the scars that were too deep to be burned away, but applications of any product opaque enough to make a difference would make my skin worse, choking it like smoke. I read advice threads but found nothing remotely helpful. Drinking more water only made trips to the bathroom more frequent. Sugar feels impossible to avoid and I love cheese too much to cut dairy. Drinking green tea did zilch. Of course I f*cking wash my face.

One night in April, I’d had enough. I hurt too much to keep sitting on my bed, long past the hours I should have begun to wind down, to not do anything to my skin. I tiptoed downstairs into the kitchen, guided by the small motion light in the wall. I took a bottle of cooking oil and retreated back upstairs, as if I could’ve been stopped. Maybe sometimes I wished someone would catch me. I flipped on the balcony light and began stripping of clothing, the hairs on my arms standing up in the cool air of the dead hour. If you want to save your clothing, toss it as far away as possible. Most of it is not flame retardant for comfort reasons. I kicked it all through the door into the house, and began lathering the oil onto my face, through my hair to get to my scalp, and on my arms, legs, and shoulders. I needed it all gone. The fire would not be tall, but I stepped away from the walls of the house. I brough my lighter tip to my index finger and clicked the trigger. I threw the plastic lighter away from me to save it from melting. I watched as the flame began to dance along my oiled hands, lining my cuticles. It was mostly on the oil still, not quite on skin. What started as a crawl became a brisk march and then frantic run as the lovely fire spread. It warmed me in the breeze that fed it. I sat down on the concrete and hugged my knees close, to reduce surface area. It was running through my hair. I would lose it. It brushed my ears and held fast to my shoulder blades as I rocked on my tailbone. This was going to help, it had to. Once the flames devoured the oil, they found my skin and found shelter in my hair follicles. They reached my bloodstream and spread further, singeing adrenalized organs. I felt them on and under my face, and if they smoked out any tears those were gone in an instant. My inner fire had found the outer. My heart no longer burned with heavy pain but with light, wild excitement. The fires merged, and became one flame that engulfed all of me, all my pain numbed by a greater burning. These body burnings can be religious experiences for some. I understand why. I am fuel for something more powerful and it bows its head to bless me, to heal me, to fix me. I sat on the balcony burning, burning, burning. I felt the wind tug the flames as if encouraging them to dance faster. I loved it, and I wanted it to end. I wished I’d been stopped. I shouldn’t be going so far for the sake of what I did it for. It was far too late.

When my blood had simmered long enough, the flames died out. I sat, locked in blackness, and cooled in the morning hours. Clouds came, I could smell them, and they brought a heavy rain. It eased the tears out of my charred eyelids and began to wash me away. It soaked into the gaps the fire ate through, and I began to rehydrate. My limbs creaked like expanding wood and I slowly unfurled and lay down. The rain found everything. It helped restore the smoking muscles and as I healed it washed away the carbon stains. I was remade. I staggered inside when I was able and found dark sleep.

When I woke, I avoided my reflection. I didn’t need to look to know that my fire had done nothing to change me. I felt the hard lumps rising and they ached badly. I gave up, that day in April.

There was simply nothing more that I could do. I diverted my attention, burned inside for other things, and for a while almost felt that I had come to accept that my genes would never work perfectly in my favor. This acceptance was not meant to be a social statement, but it turned out to be. I think I surprised my mom, who had spent years trying different products and peels and facials and had seen both consequences and great results along her anti-aging journey, that I no longer cared about the state of my skin. I didn’t know what else I could do. I put down the lighter to save for when I might scrape a knee and tried to live my life without caring. I was happier for a little while.

“I’ve scheduled you a dermatologist appointment so we can have a professional look at your skin and see if they can help,” Mom informed me one day.

 I was conflicted. I wanted help, but I felt like accepting it would go against all the work that I had done to stop caring at all.

The day of the appointment, I unmasked my face for a blonde woman to examine. She noted that I did have some deep scarring. This was no surprise to me as I had dealt with this for going on seven years, but my mom began to cry for me. I didn’t understand. How had I missed this from her before? Were my late-night facial concoctions not a clear enough sign that I was struggling? I felt that I was always an open book to everyone, everything about my face giving away more than I ever knew or wanted, but apparently, I didn’t look to her about it enough.

 I told the dermatologist that I had come to a place where I no longer cared so much, and I was still using recommended products, but was not bothered by the state of things. I told her I’d stopped burning.

“Sure, but do you really want to keep having skin like this?” She asked with a frown.

My mom peered at me intently. I felt tears burn my eyes. This was suddenly a battle that I had lost.

            I was prescribed a pill. At first only once a day, then twice, I would take the pill and feel my cheeks light up, not in a pinkish blushing way but in a red-hot glowing way. It made my blood boil, something that had to be checked up on every month at the doctor’s office. It scorched my lips, eyes, and the inside of my nose, causing skin to split and crack and bleed like it might have if I held my little lighter to it. It was a constant grass fire under my skin and between its layers that shrank my glands and pores, keeping my skin busy with a six-month regeneration action. Mom was excited for me. I can’t deny that I was too. And it worked, the pain is gone.

While I am grateful to be free of that fire, what I’ve found is that when we lose something to burn ourselves for, we quickly find new fuel.