A Random Diary: Painless Red Spots and Body Notifications Arriving Three Months Late

Spots spreading across my arms and an unexpected sense of discomfort like a mild fever

When I woke up this morning and glanced at my arms, I noticed that unfamiliar red spots had spread in clusters. There was no itching or pain. From my chest and back to the insides of my thighs and the tops of my feet, the spots had spread as if covering the surface of my body.

When I rubbed them lightly with my finger, they turned a deeper shade of red. Faced with an inexplicable change, my own body, which I thought I knew so well, suddenly felt like something distant.

On my way to my usual neighborhood dermatologist, a conversation I had at the hair salon just before suddenly crossed my mind. The hairdresser, who had noticed the abnormality on my arms through the mirror, had said this without stopping their work on my hair.

"Actually, in many cases where these kinds of symptoms appear on the body, it's because there was a significant burden two or three months ago."

At the time, I brushed it off, thinking, "Can there really be such a time lag?" When something goes wrong, people tend to look only for the immediate cause. What they ate last night, how long they slept this morning, or events from the past few days.

However, sitting on a folding chair in the crowded waiting room of the dermatology clinic in the middle of the Obon holiday, surrounded by an overflow of patients, those words began to take on a sense of reality.

What kind of life was I living three months ago? Events that I had intended to process in my mind as "things that are already over," the body might have continued to remember without forgetting.

Physical reactions are not always immediate; sometimes they overflow onto the skin or hair with a delay after time has passed.

An hour and a half wait and relief in the examination room

After waiting for about an hour and a half, my name was finally called, and I stepped into the examination room. The doctor picked up a magnifying tool and carefully observed the surface of my arms and legs.

After the interview and visual inspection, the diagnosis was "micro-internal bleeding from the capillaries." It was not a dangerous infection or an allergic reaction, and it would naturally subside without any special treatment.

"It's fine to go about your normal life."

The moment I was told that, I felt the tension that had been held throughout my entire body without me even realizing it simply melt away. With the relief of knowing it wasn't a serious situation, my daily life regained its familiar texture.

When we are moving through life without any issues, we tend to forget that our bodies are working tirelessly without rest. The reaction that appeared on my skin this time might not have been an alarm signal from my body, but rather a passing process to resolve a past burden.

When I left the hospital and breathed in the outside air, the usual cityscape looked just a little bit different. Is your body, too, leaving a small sign from you of a few months ago somewhere on your skin right now?