Skin Deep

I often find myself wanting to crawl out of my own skin. In uncomfortable times, I practically do so. I'm super fidgety, I pick at scabs and pimples, I pull my hair. I'm 27 going on 4. So when I read this, it gave me goosebumps.

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

"Then the lion said--I don't know how it spoke--You will have to let me undress you.
I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you,
but I was pretty near desperate now.
So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had 
gone right into my heart.
And when he began pulling the skin off,
it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt.
The only thing that made me able to bear it
was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.
You know--if you've ever picked a scab of a sore place.
It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see if coming away.
I know exactly what you mean, said Edmund.
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off--
just as I thought I had done it myself the other three times,
only they hadn't hurt--
and there it was lying on the grass:
only ever so much thicker and darker,
and more knobbly looking than the others had been.
And I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch
 and smaller than I had been.
Then he caught hold of me--
I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath 
now that I'd no skin on--
and threw me into the water.
It smarted like anything, but only for a moment.
After that it became perfectly delicious 
and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found 
that all the pain had gone from my arm.
And then I saw why.
I'd turned into a boy again."