how I deal with my depression

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It is a long email. So if you are not interested in, skip now.

I have rosacea now, and my left side face has been keep flushing for

two months now. A story about how I developed rosacea might can

explain a little bit about my depression.

I used to have very smooth, even texture,fair color skin with pink

cheek(this is type of skin that easy to develop rosacea, I guess, but

I do not have knowledge before and historically I do not flush more

than anybody I know of,all I remember is I would flush after eating

very spicy food).

Among the yesrs,so many strangers I met in the street,or shopping

center praised my skin, my first acne was when I was in high school

which was 12 years ago and my second one was the end of last year,

which started the whole process of rosacea. I remembered once I met a

cute baby with my friend, and said 'ha, this baby has such wonderful

skin, I like it. " My friend looked at me and said surprisingly " but

your skin just like this. "

I developped some light freckles around my eyes after I moved in CA.

I went to derm and got HQRA cream to get rid of freckles,

unfortunately it contained steroid. (My derm did not warn me about

that.) I used for two years, I had my second acne last year which

surprised me, so I went to derm again and discovered the side effect

of steroid, and withdrew from it immediately. The withdrew process

was smooth, my skin recovered in two weeks, unfortunately I was

prescribed with antibiotics for three months without proper sun

protection, at the end of three months be in antibiotics, my left

side face started to flushing. It is not flushing occasionally, it is

flushing all the time, this is Feb this year.

Since then, I can not sleep well any more. I spent lots of time in

front of mirror to regret the mistake I made and thought about my

nice skin I had before, the more I looked at my current skin, the

more depressed I had, and the worse I slept. The anxiety made my skin

worse,now started the whole cycle here.

What was worse, on March, I bought some chinese herbs to deal with my

flushing, I took it for a day, and had heaache for several days, I

could not sleep at all. Eventually I was scared to go to bed because

I was tired of laying on the bed and can not fall in sleep. This

lasted for a month, I basically can not work any more for I am a

computer programmer, I can not write code if my mind is not clear and

can not think straight. I tried seven different kind of sleep pills

with no positive effect except making me drowsy,dizzy and have

headache all the time.

I eventually realized several things I did that made my self

miserable.

The most imporant one was I demand too much. I demand that my skin

should look as nice as before, I demand I should sleep well so that

I can work funtionally. I remembered I looked at myself in front of

mirror and asked myself will you be happy if you do not have rosacea

right now? I find out if it were true, I hope I can get rid of some

red lines around my nose, if I do not have red lines around my nose,

I would want to get rid of two wrinkles I have when I smile, and the

dark cycle around my eyes I developed recently.... eventually I

realized what made me miseriable is my endless demand. Buddhism said

life is suffering, I think life is suffering because I demand too

much.

But I really can not demand such thing. There is lots of things I

wish I have, but I did not run the universe, I can not demand the

things I wanted will come true, the same is true as I can not demand

all the bad things would not happen to me like car

accident,earthquake,etc. We do not control the outside environment,

we do not control how other people think of us, we do not control our

body perfectly either.For instance, We do not know how to stop aging.

Two people with same diet, same life style might have different aging

process. What is on our hands are our decision,our belief.I really

can not control or predict the consequence of my actions. And I can

not predict the future.

I asked myself if I drive to work tomorrow, I might have car accident

or might not, but is this possibility will stop me driving tomorrow?

The answer is no. So is my sleep pattern. I can not really predict

whether I would sleep or not tonight based on the past experience. So

I stopped worry about my future. And I withdrewed from all the sleep

pills as well, since then, my sleep improved. The first night, I

slept from 12 to 5, for the past months I fall in sleep at 2am, and

woke up at 5am. Then 11 to 6:30am, or 11 to 5, I still did not sleep

perfectly, but I do not worry about that any more.

After I gave up my demand, I gave up regretting my mistakes as well.

I realized what I can do is I make decision based on the knowledge I

have , then as long as for the consequence, oh, let God decide, I

really do not control it. If I do not control it, why I bother to

worry about it?

Now I looked at mirror, instead of thinking about my past wonderfully

skin, I imaged what I would look like twenty years from now. And I

know I am prettier than I would be twenty years from now, and for

that, I cherish the moment I have now.

I used to be very pessimistic about life is so short that nothing I

do matters. But now I cherish my life for the same reason, because I

realized I would not cherish things that last forever.

In a short word, I am happier than before for the reason belows:

1. I gave up demandness.

2. I isolated my present from past and future, and only paid

attention to my present.

3. I remind myself about 1 and 2 when the time I become anxious.

Jane