Shortly after getting off of the Appalachian Trail in 2005 with a diagnosis of Lyme's Disease, I took a job installing solar panels in the northeast - in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and New York. Day in and day out I was on roofs or on the ground in high sun exposure areas. I wore sunscreen but the sun felt different than I remembered. Instead a pleasant warmth, the sun light burned. The feeling reminded me of lighting my finger on fire (a brief obsession in high school). The trick was to spray a high-alcohol breath mint spray onto my finger and then set it ablaze with a lighter or match. The heat became unbearable just about the same time the alcohol burned off and the fire extinguished (although I remember putting the fire out with a shake of the hand most of the time). This almost unbearable heat - as if my skin had just been set ablaze but had not yet registered the full fury of the fire - was how the sun felt on my skin. I put on more sunscreen. It didn't help. Shade, clouds, and night became well-loved friends.
I found out from my father that sun sensitivity was a side effect of the antibiotic I was on, Ciprofloxacin, for the Lyme's disease, which gave me hope that my new aversion to the sun was a temporary state. It was not. Within a few months Ingrid and I moved to San Diego, which is in the top ten US cities for average hours of sunshine each year. The feeling of burning while in the sun forced me indoors. I sought apartments on the north side of apartment buildings or sheltered with trees. The apartments were dark, damp, and cold - which I preferred but Ingrid did not. I made excuses to stay inside while Ingrid went out to explore, to play beach volleyball and enjoy other sun-exposed activities. The few times that I indulged in activities in the sun, I suffered the consequences - skin that burned while outside and radiated heat for hours afterward, headaches, and irritability.
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