Making Room for the Itch: Periorbital Dermatitis
Small Rebellions
by Ali Warters
My body writes
its small rebellions
on the thinnest paper it can find—
the fragile gate of vision,
skin too slight for armor.
It stings in the dialect of fire,
burns like salt splitting the seam.
I do not know this script,
its letters scatter like ash in my hands.
I listen for grammar in the itch,
for syntax in the swelling—
what is the water to this fire?
Who knew that vision itself could ache so loudly,
that sight would carry its own sting,
that seeing meant enduring the flame.
My body started speaking to me in a new way this year. In January, eczema appeared on my eyelids—thin, delicate skin suddenly red, dry, unbearably itchy. For months, Erin and I tried everything practical: eliminating foods, changing detergents, switching face products, scanning the landscape for a culprit. Each small change felt like an act of detective work, and the symptoms continued.
I began to realize that I wasn’t just chasing a trigger—I was, begrudgingly, being invited into a relationship. This eczema, however unwelcome, is a messenger. I don’t know yet what it’s here to tell me. Sometimes the itch is so fierce I want to scratch my eyeballs out of my $!&*#% skull. And yet, alongside the frustration, there’s another impulse: to listen. To ask what it needs, what it’s pointing me toward.
When I asked one of my mentors for advice, she didn’t reach for a protocol. Instead, she asked, “Well, what are you seeing that you don’t like?” That stopped me. Eczema on the eyelids, of all places— the very skin through which I open and close my eyes to the world. What am I struggling to look at? What am I resisting, bracing against, anticipating with dread?
Not long after, a rupture came in my life— an ending I hadn’t wanted, with someone I trusted and built plans alongside. And when that broke, the eczema lifted. The itchy veil cleared, almost overnight, as though my body had finally been released from the grip of anticipation.
It stayed gone for months. But just this past week, it returned in full force. And I can’t help but notice that it coincided with stepping back into familiar spaces— spaces where our footsteps overlap. My body reminding me that while the break itself is over, the echoes remain.
In Chinese medicine, this makes a certain kind of sense. The eyes are connected to the Liver and Gallbladder channels, both of which are sensitive to stress, decision-making, and the way we navigate what lies ahead. For me, when these energies are constrained, it seems to show in the skin first. For others, it might show up differently—tension headaches, digestive unrest, restless sleep, or a sense of being stuck. In my case, the message rises to the surface of my eyes, a fragile threshold between what I take in and what I turn away from.
So I’m practicing respect. I want my body to feel heard and protected by me. I want it to know that I’ll advocate for it, that I’ll work with it rather than against it. That I want it to be happy, content, supported— at ease in its own skin.
For now, the eczema remains. But maybe the deeper work is less about erasing it and more about learning its language. What does the body ask of us when it flares, itches, and aches? Can we hold our symptoms not only as inconveniences to be banished, but as signals of something deeper—calls for attention, care, or change?
I don’t yet have the answers. What I do have is this: a body asking me to listen.
