As soon as the intense summer sun emerges, I want to expose every skin cell on my body and succumb to the dancing rays. Don’t we all? The predictability of human nature is deceptively dangerous. As the sun rises to its prime in the midday sky, a grin delicately slides across my face.

The sun pleasantly warms your skin, inflicting a tempting darker hue, whilst covertly tinkering with your DNA to cause lasting damage. Despite this, we crave the warmth, and freedom it brings, as light engulfs the sky throughout those pleasant summer evenings.

Masked as a beautiful glow in our planet’s sky, beneath the surface erupts something more sinister. Nuclear fusion and fission; explosive reactions on a scale beyond our comprehension that release terrifying bursts of energy we naively interpret as welcoming warmth. Don’t look directly at it. Not only will it singe your eyes, but perhaps you’ll see something so frightful, it will eternally scar your mind.

You bask in the sun, you burn. You bask in the sun, you burn. Evening after evening, your skin tightens across your bones, every pore attempting to exude the fiery heat you willingly absorbed that day. The cycle continues. You are aware of the consequences, but you endlessly succumb to the warmth of the sun.

We are unduly satisfied by, and addicted to, that which harms us.

What would you do, if you discovered the very reason for your existence was covertly harming you to an unimaginable degree? Would you swallow the nausea and continue to dance with the sun, basking in your self-infliction? Would you lather every inch of your skin in factor 50 before leaving your house? Or would you cease to leave your house, hiding, traumatised with fright?

Some maypolitely ask the sun to reduce the intensity of the energy it exudes, but the sun does not know compromise nor empathy. It is 91 million miles away and thoroughly incapable of existing in any way other than its intrinsically self-absorbed manner. Some things are deeply engrained, beyond change.

For now, I will take supplementary vitamins and apply factor 50 when reluctantly leaving the safety of my house. Whilst this satisfies my body’s craving for vitamin D, my mind eternally longs for warmth on my skin once more. Will the memory of this warmth slowly be erased by time?

Now beginsthe excruciating cross-examination of each mole and blemish on my skin to look for clues to decipher exactly what damage I bare.

*

Upon my return home from countless summer holidays abroad, she forcefully compares our skin tones. Her mouth proudly proclaims herself victorious as her skin is darker. In response, I desperately strip off and neglect my skin in the scorching sun, intent on inflicting enough damage to be worthy of her acceptance.

The inferiority of my pale skin lets me down. Whilst my skin is not sufficiently tanned, perhaps the organs it conceals are. In a competition to see who is the most damaged, she will always win.

I don’t want to compete, nor do I want to be the most tanned. In a game she invented, she will always win. But I refuse to refrain from examining myself, simply because she insists my pain is insufficient by comparison.

Infants have the right to be protected from harm; they are learning, growing and innocently exploring the world. As they enter adulthood, they can rationally decide whether they want to expose themselves to the rays of the sun. But they should be blessed with a blank canvas; the beautifully untampered, delicate skin they were born wearing.