Lyme Dreams: A Series #6 - How Pale Am I?

This dream was from August 9th, 2020

I had a dream where I thought I was tan.  And I put my arm around someone and realized I was appallingly pale.  I was so pale that I thought to myself "I need to go put on sunscreen right now".  

(Note that in real life I am very pale.  I was also on antibiotics for Lyme Disease and therefore had a greater likelihood of burning.  It must have been a thing my brain was just thinking about sort of constantly in the summer months.)

My pallid nature has been a source of both amusement and consternation for me.  I am rather pale.  But I'm not so pale that I don't tan.  I have a propensity to burn but it will turn into a tan that gradually builds through the summer.  I'm just not willing to burn often enough to actually get tan according to the rest of the world.  I'm tan for me, and it allows me to not burn instantly and that's good enough for me.  I've had too many family members with skin cancer to be into tanning for someone else's satisfaction or for some superficial beauty reasons.  Besides, there is nothing worse than a burn so bad that it's impossible to wear clothes and move even the slightest bit without immense pain.  

So, I'm not the palest person on the planet, in actual fact.  But I also wear a fair amount of sunscreen and tend to be pale year-round (at least compared to those who are naturally darker and properly tan).  The times I mind this the most include 1. when I burn, and 2. when I attract bugs in the darkness.  

Yes, it's true, that in pale moonlight I'm so pale that I'm almost bioluminescent and that bugs are attracted to me as a light source.  I know that I run towards the melodramatic and hyperbole.  If I were you, I'd probably be discounting this whole thing as poetic exaggeration.  But bugs are actually attracted to me in the dark because of how pale my skin is, and that is the honest truth.   

It's a conundrum. I'm not actually that pale.  I do actually tan.  But I also attract bugs in the dark because I'm that pale.  I don't know how I manage to live such a superiorly ridiculous life.