Here Goes

[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for the following, all of which are perpetrated by myself: ableist slurs, fat shaming, flagrant disregard of (non-sexual) personal boundaries in the context of a romantic relationship, and prejudice against mental illness.  There is also content towards the end of the post pertaining to self-harm, before which I have inserted a marker 'discussion of self-harm begins here'.]

As posted on the www.facetheissue.com forum on Friday 9th March.

I have always, always, always picked at marks on my face, ever since I was old enough to co-ordinate my hands. Even as a little kid, in all my school photos except one I have a little (or big) scab somewhere on my face. I don't know if they started out as spots or what, but once they got there they would last for weeks because I would not leave them alone. When I was four or five, in my first year at school, my teacher used to tell me off for picking. I once got sent to the toilets with a tube of cream for a gaping sore on my nose where I'd picked a scab so deep that blood was welling up out of it. All the kids in my class were staring at me as I left the classroom. I felt so ashamed, but there I stood in the girls' toilets, alternately dabbing on cream and picking at the sore edges and telling myself that when I got bigger I would stop doing it. I realise, looking back, that feeling ashamed and unhappy didn't help me to stop, they only made the problem worse.

I guess it really became a big problem when I hit puberty and the spots started coming thick and fast. I picked all of them, constantly, and quickly discovered squeezing. I remember the first time I did it, in front of my bathroom mirror, and the little thrill of repulsion I felt. It frustrated me when some of them wouldn't pop because I felt like I just HAD to somehow make that sore bump go away - they always felt so much huger than they looked, as though they were practically engulfing my face. Sometimes if it wouldn't pop I would just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until it was such a mess that the scab would come up green and slimy from infection. I tried not to let it get that bad because I hated going to school and facing the other kids looking like that. I learned the trick of sticking pins into stubborn pimples to break them open, sterlising the pin with my dad's lighter first to kill the everyday germs.

I knew I looked bad. But as I only had to see it when I was alone and looking in the mirror, I didn't really relate that to what other people saw when they looked at me. I wasn't the kind of kid who had a lot of friends in school, I had a couple of really good ones who would stick by me no matter what I looked like, but as far as the rest were concerned, I knew that my face could clear up magically overnight and they still wouldn't like me any better - I would still have the wrong hair and the wrong clothes, and like the wrong things. I would still be a social retard. So it didn't seem to matter. And anyway, somehow I just didn't connect the way I looked with what I was doing. I just told myself I was an unlucky teenager with really bad skin, and that one day I would eventually grow out of it.

Mostly I could get away with not dealing with it because I didn't have to see it. Occasionally it got brought home to me at unexpected moments. Little kids would ask me if I had chicken pox, and their mothers would go red and shush them, mumbling embarassed apologies. I would stoically pretend that it was fine. I didn't mind the kids' curiosity half so much as I minded the parents' embarassment. One time, when I was fifteen or so, I was shopping with my mother in a charity shop, and the plump and friendly old lady behind the counter said, "I hope you don't mind my saying, dear, but my grand-niece used to have problems with her skin, and you know there are lots of face creams and things out there that will really help a lot." I froze, like a rabbit in the headlights. My mother was watching to see how I would deal with it - she'd been telling me to stop picking pretty much since I was born. I wanted so badly to scream at the nosy old ***** to mind her own business and slam the door as I ran out in tears, but I have never been much good at expresssing negative feelings and there was no way I could ever have actually done it. I fixed a brittle smile onto my face, thanked her for the advice and left quietly, feeling utterly mortified. I wished I'd had the guts to reply with, "Hey, it's cool. While we're caring and sharing, did you know that there are lots of really good diets out there that would help you to not be such a sperm whale?" I was so angry that she had dared to pierce my litttle bubble of don't-see-it, don't-talk-about-it, don't-have-a-problem. She was only trying to be helpful.

The only person who didn't offend me when she said something - and she only ever mentioned it once - was my best friend Polly. I forget how we got onto the topic, we must have been talking about looks in some shape or form, one day at school when I was fifteen or sixteen I guess. She said, perfectly seriously and sincerely, "You really need to stop - you know," and motioned with her hand near her face. I began blustering an outright denial, but it was clearly a total lie and I gave it up. "Yeah, I know," I said, looking away. I knew it was my own fault, when I thought about it. I knew I should stop doing it. And figured I would. One day.

The worst thing was when I started doing it to my first girlfriend. She would sometimes get these big blocked pores on her nose, and in between kissing her I would squeeze them out. I made up this thing about her nose being really cute, and I would squeeze it when I said it. She didn't like me doing it and sometimes complained that I was hurting her. I loved her more than anything and I would have walked off a cliff for her in a heartbeat, but this one simple thing I couldn't stop. She wasn't very confident at standing up for herself and having a go at other people, so I continued to get away with it. I thought she didn't realise what I was actually doing, until one day when she had a proper lump of a spot on her nose, I popped it and she yelled "OW! Stop squeezing my spots!" I went bright red and mumbled, "Sorry." I decided then and there not to do it anymore. I think that promise lasted about three days. I knew she didn't like it, but it was as though my actions were totally beyond my control.

I was eighteen before I got my first boyfriend - I'd gone to a girls' school so I didn't really know any boys until I started working. I'd thought I was a lesbian, but it turned out I liked guys too, once I actually met some! By that point I was feeling a little more conscious of the way I looked, probably as a result of being friends with these other, pretty waitresses at work who wore make-up and did their hair and looked generally perfect, to my eyes. So when I got together with one of the chefs, I felt kind of bad that I didn't look as pretty as the other girls. I felt like he deserved better than someone who looked like me. So I decided to stop picking and see if I would start to look a bit nicer. That lasted approximately four hours. The itching inside my mind was so much stronger than any desire to look pretty. I went back to my old ways, and pushed away the beginnings of a nagging voice telling me that I wasn't in control. That, like an alcoholic, I was kidding myself that I could stop anytime I wanted to, but that in reality I was completely incapable of walking way from my habit.

Last summer, it really started to get me down. I think it was because I got this crush on my friend/housemate, Kelvin, who was amazingly good-looking, so when he turned me down I felt like I wasn't pretty enough for him. He could easily have a girl who looked like she belonged on the front cover of Vogue, so why on earth would he want one who looked like me? I stopped for three whole days in August. It was a mammoth achievement and an enormous mental strain. On the fourth day I went on a picking frenzy. I was a mess.

I tried repeatedly to stop after that, not just because of Kelvin, whom I still liked, but because I was now consciously aware of the fact that I wasn't in control of this habit, and I didn't want to be stuck with it forever. At twenty-one, the validity of the 'teenage acne' excuse was wearing thin. I was beginning to realise that I was going to have this problem forever if I didn't actively face it. I started to think: Before many more years have passed, I'm going to start getting some wrinkles. If I leave it until then before I stop, then I'm never going to know what it feels like to have smooth, clear skin on my face. Ever. I'll go from scabby to wrinkly to dead and that'll be the end of it.

I would really like to know how it feels to be pretty.

At the beginning of December I met with a professional contact about finding a new job. He had a bad complexion and a nervous disposition, and throughout the whole meeting he rubbed and picked at a bulbous cluster of spots above his left eyebrow. It looked really offputting. My first thought was, "Gross!" My second was, "My god, I do that all the time." It was an awful shock to see someone else doing it. Nobody says anything because they're too polite, so you think it's not noticable. That little incident showed me just how horribly obvious it is when you're messing with your facial acne in public. I started noticing people occasionally doing it on the bus, too, and I was totally horrified at just how visible it is. I took to gripping my left hand in my right when sat on the bus, gripping very hard so my left couldn't start unconsciously messing with my face while I was thinking about something else.

I tried to quit a few more times coming up to Christmas, but each time I would cave in as soon as something stressed me out a little. By New Year I felt totally helpless. I was starting to think about some kind of professional help, but I really didn't want to do that. I'm pretty prejudiced against shrinks and so forth. I feel like it would make me weak and stupid to have to go and see one, I feel like shrinks are for people who are too weak and stupid to sort their problems out themselves. I really do apologise for any offence I've caused with that comment, because I'm perfectly aware that it's an irrational and offensive prejudice. That's not what I THINK about professional help, it's just how I FEEL about it, if that makes any sense. I know that asking for help takes a great deal of strength, and that it's the stronger, smarter thing to do. But even knowing that, I still feel too proud and scornful and ashamed to do it.

At New Year, Kelvin quit smoking. I bought some smiley stickers for him to put on his calendar on days when he was 'good', and I got a packet for myself too. I felt like, knowing that he was having a tough time of it too, might help me to also quit my habit. Like we were in it together, and that I shouldn't let him down, even though he didn't know what I was doing. I got three stickers in a row, missed one, and then got four in a row. I was really pleased. Then I missed one, then got one, then missed three... and it all went to pot. The more I missed, the more I felt like I could never quit, which made me feel like I had no control, which made me more stressed, which made the feeling of needing to pick/squeeze stronger, which made me mess with my face, which made me miss another sticker... I got a few two-days and three-days in January and February. In February, I missed more than I got, by about a 60/40 ratio. Kelvin was slapping stickers up onto his calendar, left right and centre. I felt like such a failure. If he could quit his smoking habit, which was not only psychological but also a physical chemical addiction, then why was I so stupid and useless that I couldn't quit something which was only a psychological bad habit? Why didn't I have any willpower? Why was I so weak? Needless to say, my self-esteem was taking a battering.

It's hardest when I'm at my desk at work, or studying at college or at home. My right hand holds my pen, and my left constantly gravitates toward my face. It picks and rubs and squeezes without me even thinking about it. I have to actively concentrate in order to put it somewhere else, but as soon as I get into whatever I'm doing, it strays back again. A couple of times I've put socks over my hands when I'm doing my homework, like scratch mitts for a baby. It works, up to a point - I can't scratch, but I'm so used to scratching whilst writing my homework that the frustration builds up inside my head and drives me to distraction. Homework takes me twice as long because concentration is impossible. The resulting mental itching and frustration from having socks on my hands can get so bad that I just rip them off and go find a mirror, because I feel like I'll go crazy if I don't. Back to square one.

At the beginning of March, I was thinking about why I found it so hard to stop, and trying to understand why on earth it should be so impossible. I was thinking, "It's like some kind of sick obsession... the urge to fiddle with my face is such a strong compulsion..." And the words OBSESSION and COMPULSION just slammed together in my head like thunder. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. "Oh hell no," I thought to myself. Bad habit is one thing. Mental illness is a whole different ball game. I WILL NOT be mentally ill. I absolutely refuse.

[Content Warning added 20Jan2014: discussion of self-harm begins here and continues to the end of the post.]

That led to the implementation of desperate measures. My mother once told me that what I was doing was a kind of self-harm. I think she wanted to shock me out of it, but at the time I wasn't listening, and her nagging only stressed me out and made it worse. She stopped bothering after a while. But that comment stuck with me. Self-harm.

So here's the theory:
If I subconsciously feel a need to self-harm, then maybe I could satisfy that need by other means. Maybe if I was to self-harm in a different way, then I wouldn't feel the need to pick so much. If I can't stop outright, then maybe I could at least transfer onto a different bad habit. One that doesn't show on my face.

On the first of March, I took a disposable razor to my room and had at my upper left arm. I'm not even using proper blades; it's impossible to go deep using a disposable. They're surface scratches. I've no interest in causing myself serious injury. They bleed a little, and they sting, but it's nothing that will leave scars or anything. At bedtime on the seventh of March, I completed a full week's run of stickers. I had cut myself every day for a week, and I had stayed pick-free. And it was showing. But I couldn't allow myself to look too much. Mirrors are too big a temptation, which is why I don't keep one in my room. There's a wall-length one in our bathroom. I hate that mirror so much. I feel like I can't get away from it. I feel magnetised towards it every time I go in there. Some days I want to smash it, but I can't - it isn't mine, and it's expensive. Kelvin would only replace it, anyway. One mirror could be an accident - but two? Three? Four? Not a practical solution.

Yesterday, the eighth of March, was a college day. I was in the library on my own, working on my project, bored out of my brain. So, by way of a break from work, I googled "obsessive compulsive disorder" and browsed the Wikipedia entry it threw at me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive_compulsive_disorder

Some things seemed to fit and others didn't. The thing that decided it was this: "OCD sufferers do not actively want to perform their compulsive tasks, and experience no pleasure from doing so." And I thought - "That's not me." Because, I sort of like it. I sort of enjoy it. And that's a horribly embarassing admission.

I kept reading anyway, feeling a bit lost. If I didn't have OCD after all, then what was my excuse? Why was I being such a retard over it, why couldn't I just break a damn habit like any normal person? And then I got down to "related disorders" and saw the words "compulsive skin picking" and my heart flip-flopped. I immediately scrolled back up to get away from those awful words, sat stock-still for several seconds, and then cautiously checked over my shoulder (I kid you not) to see if anyone had seen what I was looking at. Nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention. I scrolled back down and clicked the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_skin_picking

And it was me. It was one hundred percent me. I don't have a skin condition. I have a mental disorder.

So here I am, sharing my story with you fine people. I am on day nine and I have eight stickers, and I will continue to cut myself for as long as I need to. I am hopeful that, one day, I won't need to anymore. But for now, it's a plain choice between scabby arm or scabby face, and I'm happy to make the trade-off.

I'm scared of messing up. Because if I can't do it like this, if knowing that it's a mental illness and scagging my arm up don't do the trick, then I have no idea where to go from there. I'm frightened of missing one single sticker, because I know how disheartened and defeated that will make me feel, and I know that will make it so much harder to get back on track. I'm scared of being ugly forever. I'm scared that someone will notice what I'm doing to my arm and there will be a huge hullaballoo. I don't cut myself because I hate myself. I do it because it's the only way to even slightly appease the overwhelming compulsion to mutilate my face. How on earth could I make somebody understand that? They would think I was a total fruitloop. They would want me to go to a doctor - or worse, a shrink. And the stress of being caught out, of having a hundred and one questions fired at me, of being interrogated about this enormously embarassing personal problem... I'm not sure I could manage that stress and still keep pick-free.

I feel like such a freak...

Peach xxx

clever girl, way to go; eight stickers in a row