You've said "I don't do short sleeves" so many times you've almost started to believe it.
You've sat out the pool days with your friends. Or you went once, spent the whole time tugging your sleeves down, and swore you wouldn't put yourself through it again.
You've made the excuses for years. At some point the anger faded and you just quietly accepted that this was simply your life now.
You've done the steroid creams. The oatmeal baths. The endless moisturizers. The biologics. Nothing held. And every time one of them failed, you turned the blame on yourself.
But you were never the problem.
The treatments were.
