Journey to Recovery

Day 1: I am going all the way back to day one so I can start reporting my progress again. So far for the month of June I have managed to gain some major control, but still have my struggles. Here is my predicament however. Last Saturday I did Tough Mudder in Whistler, which is a 12 mile obstacle course. That day it was supposed to rain on the mountain, but that never happened. It ended up being sunny, and that combined with water and snow that hadn't melted off the mountain yet, I ended up getting a horrible second degree sunburn. I developed blisters on both of my shoulders and my one shoulder was so bad I lost an entire layer of skin on the top of my shoulder. Now both of my shoulders are leathery, flaky, and peeling. I find it really hard not to pick and scratch and normally I am not a body picker. This has affected my chest too and I have some spots where the skin has rubbed off. It looks gross and I just want it to heal. If that's not bad enough, my forehead got really dry and scabbed, and on Tuesday an entire layer of skin on my nose fell off leaving it red, raw, and very exposed. I looked like a freak. I have been using aloe vera and hydrocortizone on my face to help with the healing and so far my face is looking a lot better. My problem is whenever the skin gets dry enough on my nose, I like to pick off the flakes and that usually leaves me with some red spots that develop more thin scabs. My eyebrow area (which I have problems with when I pluck) is down to one red mark from a partially ingrown/irritated hair, but that is it! It's not even that big and my eyebrow area hasn't been this good since the end of last year and that never lasted. I am just worried about picking at these scabs because I know that it's not good for my skin. It just bothers me because I have been working so hard to get nice skin and then this happened. My boyfriend came back to town on Wednesday after being away at camp for 3 weeks. All I wanted was for him to see how hard I was trying because he knows about my skin issue. I pretty much looked like a scabbed freak though because of my sunburn. It's a good thing he cares about me so much and didn't give a damn. If he wasn't so understanding I don't think we would still be together because this has had quite an effect on my life. On Wednesday night he even convinced me to go out to the casino with him and his aunt. I swore I would never go out with my scabbed ugly face, but I was in one of my rare "so what" attitudes and I actually had a lot of fun. On top of that, everywhere we went he held my hand and was proud of having me by his side. One thing I have on my mind is whether I should go to a Canada Day party tomorrow. My boyfriend recently started a new job and the party is at one of his manager's houses. I haven't met any of his new coworkers so I'm a bit concerned meeting them when I look like this. People I have talked to have said I should go, but I'm just not sure if I will have the confidence. I would just like to look my best when I meet these people. Maybe that's the wrong way to be thinking about things, but that's how my mind works. Anyways, what do you all think? Should I go to the party or stay home for the evening?