Picky Dreams

I had a dream about picking last night.

***** : WARNING : GRAPHIC : MAY TRIGGER : *****

Strangely, it was a spot on my arm. I’m not really an arms/legs/body picker, owing to how I mostly only get spots on my face and back – and my back is awkward to get to, and not as ‘satisfying’ because I can’t see it. However. I digress. The dream.

I caught sight of this spot, on my right forearm, and it was a cystic monster – huge and red and tight and sore, with the head just starting to peak under the top layer of skin. Somehow in my dream I hadn’t noticed it before. It was beautifully ripe, and it wasn’t on my face, so I decided it didn’t really count if I picked it. I caught it gently, and pinched. It burst beautifully. An initial semi-solid flurry, and then a slower squeezing out of all the runny yellow gunk.

That yellow gunk just didn’t stop coming. At first I was pleased at there being so much, because it extended the moment of popping. Then I was midly alarmed, but couldn’t let go of the pinching. I had to get it all out – there being so much of it only made that need greater.

It finally stopped coming. It looked like a small mountain on my arm; I couldn’t see the spot beneath it anymore. Carefully, I wiped the gunk away with my hand, and there beneath it lay the wound, already healed into a large scab. I guess it was about the size of a large flattened grape.

I picked it off.

I don’t know quite how to describe what I saw beneath that scab. It kind of looked like one of those pits beneath a cattle-grid which is designed to let small animals escape – a forty-five-degree slope on one side, meeting a vertical drop on the other. Like a capital N with the left-hand line missing.

The wound wasn’t bloody, or weepy, or even moist. It looked as though someone had ripped a deep chunk from my forearm a long time ago, and my arm had been left to heal that way. The vertical-drop wall of the wound was pink and wrinkly like scar tissue, but the part which sloped down to meet it was smooth and pure, with hairs and freckles growing on it all the way down to the bone. In my dream, I was shocked and frightened. I was too scared to touch it. I just stared.

Right at the deepest part of the wound, where I could see a sliver of the bone of my forearm, it seemed as though the wound didn’t quite stop. The walls pressed together, but they weren’t sealed together, rather like some Freudian pseudo-vagina on my arm. As I stared at this monstrosity in horror, it seemed I was somehow, impossibly, able to look all the way down this wound, travelling all the way down my arm through flesh and bone, and spreading out in the palm of my hand like a disease, all straggly-edged. And inside my palm I could see, as if looking at an x-ray, the bones of my hand and fingers. Parts of the bone were missing and others were breaking off; I was quite simply rotting away inside my skin.

The last thing I remember before waking up in a cold sweat, is my dream-brain understanding that I had done this to myself.

Waxing Lyrical

Memories consume
Like opening the wounds
I’m picking me apart again
You all assume
I’m safe here in my room
Unless I try to start again

I don’t want to be the one
The battles always choose
'Cause inside I realize
That I’m the one confused

I don’t know what’s worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
I don’t know why I instigate
And say what I don’t mean
I don’t know how I got this way
I know it’s not alright
So I’m breaking the habit
Breaking the habit tonight

Clutching my cure
I tightly lock the door
I try to catch my breath again
I hurt much more
Than anytime before
I had no options left again

I’ll paint it on the walls
'Cause I’m the one at fault
I’ll never fight again
And this is how it ends

I don’t know what’s worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
But now I have some clarity
To show you what I mean
I don’t know how I got this way
I’ll never be alright
So I’m breaking the habit
I'm breaking the habit
I'm breaking the habit
Tonight

~~~Breaking The Habit
Linkin Park

* * * * *

Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
Or a perfect daughter
Can it be
I'm not meant to play this part?

Now I see
That if I were truly to be myself
I would break my family's heart

Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
Why is my reflection
Someone I don't know?
Somehow I cannot hide
Who I am, though I've tried
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?

When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?

~~~Reflection
Disney's Mulan

Other Outlets

[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for compulsive eating and trichotillomania aka hair pulling.]

I haven’t seen my reflection since Saturday.

It’s easier that way I guess. Knowing it’s pickable is one thing, actually seeing it is too much. Even if I manage to walk away from the mirror, it will nag me until I go back.

I feel frustrated. Strangely, I don’t feel a strong urge to pick. I just feel generally frustrated, and wanting to do something to relieve the frustration. Cue binge-eating, and wielding tweezers at my bikini-bits again. I’ve been keeping it shaved down there ever since the disaster with the waxing strips; the itchiness of the stubble only bothers me for a week or so after shaving the first time, and then it goes away. So I’m not trich-ing on it because it itches or anything. Just because it’s something I can do which absorbs me enough to make me forget about my face. It’s a diversion. But even there I have to be careful – it’s easy to get zealous enough about it that I start digging into myself to root out the stubble lying beneath the surface. I don’t want to replace one flesh-destroying habit with another. Even if the replacement seems like a better option because it’s not on a public part of my body, it’s still not much of a trade-off.

I picked a little today. Both times were at my desk at work, and I found myself doing it before I’d realised what I was doing. If I catch myself in time, I can stop myself, and that’s fine. But to leave a scab half-picked, to imagine it partly hanging off my face, is just not an option. It probably should be. I should probably be stricter with myself. But Christ, how can I leave it looking like that? Feeling like that?

So I caught myself half-way through, when it was too late, and then finished the job feeling guilty. The first one, on my chin, felt really dry and flaky, as though it was ready to come off anyway, so I didn’t really beat myself up over that. The second was pretty fresh – didn’t bleed, but wept some clear fluid. I should not have picked that one.

But god, it’s good to be back on the SPOM board. It’s so fantastic to feel like I’m not alone. Yeah. Not much else to say on that point I guess, just wanted to say it.

Well, I’m done here. I’m gonna go write some stuff up in my diary proper. Or maybe I’ll get as far as the bed, gather my diary and pen about me, and then pick up the tweezers. Just for five minutes. And then do it until bedtime.

*shrug*

Kick-Start at the Bungalow

[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for use of ableist slurs and thoughts of self-harm.]

Wow. Haven’t been on here in a while.

Truth is, I’m not doing so great. I mean, compare myself to a year ago, yes, progress has been made. But compare myself to eight months ago – I’ve slid backwards. Especially right now; I have a faceful of scabs that I don’t seem quite able to leave alone. At my desk at work. On the bus. Habit-zones I thought I’d cracked. And so now my hands are back all over me like I never trained them to leave it alone.

I’ve sort of been dimly aware of this for a while, but it’s become less and less ignorable over the last few days and now I’ve hit crunch point. I helps, I think, that Caleb knows. I’m seeing him this evening, and he won’t say anything, but he’ll know that I’ve been major picky, and I’ll know that he knows. That helps to keep me self-aware of when I’m doing badly, and not just push it to the back of my mind.

I’ve just moved into my parents’ house for a fortnight, to feed their cats while they’re on holiday. The change feels kind of inspirational I guess. I’m here on my own and I can set up the house my own way, without having to worry about housemates asking me where the bathroom mirror’s disappeared to. The mirrors here are sorted; that was the first thing I did as soon as Mum and Dad left. I’m not doing stickers because I’m too much of a perfectionist – if I miss just one, I feel like the perfection is totally ruined and there’s no point anymore. I thought about doing my arm again as a kick-start back into being strict with myself, but I’m not single anymore, and Caleb would notice. I’m not sure he’d understand that, and even if he did, I’m pretty sure he still wouldn’t like it. I don’t want to look like an emotard, and I don’t want to upset him. So: cutting = no.

Been back on the SPOM board for the first time in months, feel I might read the book again too. So long as I was doing well and not really thinking about it, it felt best to steer clear of obsessing about the issue by browsing forums etc, and just let the issue fade into the background of my life. Yes, I still picked occasionally, but overall I was doing really well, and I felt like obsessing over every tiny slip would be the opposite of helpful. That was a good place to be inside my head.

Trouble was, because I was focussing on other things and not obsessing, I guess I didn’t notice when I gradually started to pick more often again. Telling myself to let the little slip-ups go and not stress myself out and make myself worse. It happened slowly. I hardly noticed. And then a couple days ago I looked in the mirror – properly looked, not just glancing to check my hair or blindly picking – and I thought, “Holy crap. Where did all that come from? I’m a mess!”

Lots of new people and topics on SPOM since I was there last. This post intrigued me particularly,

http://www.stoppickingonme.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4302

because of the link to personality disorders. The poster wrote, “My mother has OCPD (not OCD)” and I wondered what the difference was between the two. So I clicked the handy link and looked up OCPD.

It was pretty spooky.

http://www.ptypes.com/obsessive-compd.html

I don’t want to be some jumped-up hypochondriac who runs round the internet self-diagnosing all kinds of weird and random stuff. I’m not going to say “Ohmigod that’s me, I have that disorder” because I don’t particularly believe in labelling people’s oddities and making them diseases, making them something that's ‘wrong’. I don’t like the idea of that.

…But then, an aversion to ‘wrong’ is listed as a symptom of OCPD! So, catch twenty-two much.

The need to be ‘right’. Yup. Ever since I was a little kid at the top of my class, looking down my nose at all the other kids for getting things wrong. I rarely got into trouble at school, and when I did, I cried buckets. I couldn’t help it. I hated being in the wrong. I guess I wasn’t used to it because it didn’t happen much. I was very good at pleasing the adults. I remember it seemed like the most important thing in the world – to be right, and to have an adult tell you so.

Perfectionism that interferes with task completion. This is why I take so long on jobs at work. I get so caught up in doing things the ‘right’ way, following the ‘right’ routine and process, I lose focus of what it is I’m trying to achieve. I spend ages picking apart little numerical differences (I’m an accountant) that shouldn’t matter, but do, because they’re not quite ‘right’. By about three pence. The half hour I spend finding that three pence will cost the client twelve pounds. And then I need to make sure all the page margins and column widths are correct, and that all the numbers are to the right number of decimal places, and that the zoom factor is set to the largest it can be without cutting information out on each page… Needless. Pointless. And yet I waste time on it, over and over, every day. I tell myself I’m not going to do it, it’s not important, that I’ll just sort out all the column widths on the page in one go, at the end, save time. But as I’m inputting on the spreadsheet, that columns that are wider than they need to be niggle me relentlessly until I just fix it, to stop it annoying me. And then it’s the same for the next column I create. And the next. One by one, wasting so much fucking time.

Morally inflexible. Well, naturally. Otherwise I’d be doing something wrong, wouldn’t I? Can’t have that. I’m an absolute dragon over ethics, and poor Caleb is bearing the brunt of it at the moment. I’m starting to wonder if I’m really in the right on that one. He’s going to be poor, and it’s going to be my fault. Is it really as much of a big deal as I’m making out?

Adopts a miserly spending style. Ohmifuckinggod I damn near had a panic attack when I got my backpay in November. I had twice my usual pay in my bank account and my brain just screamed. I didn’t know what to do with it. In the end I drew it all out and hid it in my room. What sense does it make to be afraid of having money? No, not of having it. Of spending it.

Blah. This is descending into a general emo rant of epic proportions. Jesus, I want to go cut myself now! :s Butno. For that is silliness. Well, I guess I’m done here. Conclusion: I’m a neurotic freak, and I think too much.

Peace, out.

Enter Caleb

[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for trichotillomania aka hair pulling.]

It's good that I haven't blogged for a long time. It means I'm not obsessing anymore, and that's a step forward. I'm getting to a point now where I'm mostly reasonably comfortable with my appearance. There's a long way to go still, but my god I've come so far. Scabs are few and far between. Freckles are re-invading my whole face. Hyperpig is gradually fading. Life is continuing, without me needing to think about my complexion every day. Major pat on the back to me. I do still mess with it - maybe for a few seconds every other day or so. This time last year I would not have thought it possible to pick so little. I would have laughed at anyone who suggested it - right before crawling into a hole to await death by intense shame.

On Saturday July 21st, I met Caleb. I'm not going to go into details about him, that's what my diary proper is for. I don't write about dtM stuff in there, and I don't write about life stuff in here. So this is the part of last night that isn't going to make it into my handwritten diary. It's dtM stuff and it belongs here.

Last night, Caleb was filling me in on some of his 'oddities', as he affectionately terms them. The best way I could describe them is as OCD-type impulses and fixations. Nothing debilitatingly severe, but a liberal sprinkling of mild-to-moderate symptoms. He gets the symmetry thing sometimes, and can also get pretty twitchy when certain things are not as they 'should' be. He talked about it for a little while, then expressed an interest in any little oddities that I might have.

Of course dtM came instantly to mind. But I’ve only known him a month and I was a long was from ready to discuss that. So I went for something similar – something that probably happened because I am picking so much less now, and my crazy is looking for an alternative escape route. I guess I was sort of sounding Caleb out, to see if it would be worth trying to explain the dtM thing to him at a later date.

I made it funny, to start with. I related how I was trying to wax my legs for the first time on Sunday night, and making a right hash of it, and then tried to do my bikini line and dropped the wax strip directly between my legs, like a right klutz. Sticky side down and everything. Well it was meant to be soluable in warm water, but that claim was apparently a fine joke on the part of the makers, because I ended up having to shave down there to get it all out. I hadn’t wanted to do that. Stubble itches. Within twenty-four hours I could feel it growing back down there, and I guess it affected me so badly because I’m rarely doing my face these days. It drove me nuts. Here’s how I explained it to Caleb:

“Okay, so I have this thing about my skin. If anything’s stuck on it, or in it or under it, I just can’t stand the feeling of it. It makes me go totally batshit and I need to get it out. Like when you get a splinter or something? If I have a splinter, I can feel it there, and it’s got to go. It doesn’t matter how deep I have to dig or how much I make myself bleed, it’s just GOT to go, I can’t stand feeling it there.”

“Oh god, yes,” he replied fervently. The look on his face told me that he was right there with me and knew exactly how I felt on the subject. It wasn’t just sympathy, it was an instant understanding from someone who felt the same way. It was wonderfully encouraging. I went on,

“So when this stubble started growing back, it felt like a thousand tiny splinters down there. It was absolutely driving me insane. I just had to get it all out. And so that’s why my tweezers are in my room.”

He winced, hard. “Ohmigod. That must have hurt like hell.”

“Well, yeah,” and I shrugged, “but that wasn’t the point. I just needed to get it out, and nothing else mattered.”

We hugged. There was quiet for a while. And then he said, “Have you ever heard of Trich?”

I froze. He knew Trich? What other OCD-related disorders did he know? “Trichotillomania?” I said guardedly.

“Eh?” He looked confused.

“You mean, hair pulling?” I clarified.

“Yeah, yeah!” He sat up properly. “I used to do it all the time, mostly in my teens, especially when I was stressed out or something. I told a friend one day and she was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s Trich,’ which was how I found out it was an actual condition. I’d just sit there and pull strands out of this particular patch for hours, sometimes I’d do it in front of the mirror. Spots are another thing, too. Like especially those little subdermal ones? I just can't stop fiddling with them, they irritate me so much, I just end up digging them out. None of my ex-girlfriends ever got why I'd get so pissed off with them if they pointed out a spot on my nose..."

I was utterly and completely rabbit-in-the-headlights frozen. He didn't look like a dtManiac, but then neither do I anymore - not much anyway - and he sure as hell was talking like one. Part of me wanted to grab him and squeal and jump up and down shouting "Me too, me too!" but the majority of me absolutely could not move or speak. So I just sat and stared at him as he reeled off all this stuff that sounded as though it came directly from my own head. I guess I was sort of spellbound. It wasn't just what he was saying. I couldn't believe his courage in feeling able to say it. He totally dumbfounded me. In that moment, he was the most amazing person on earth. I was in awe.

I was also staring with the most huge eyes ever, and Caleb broke off, studying me. "Are you okay?" he asked. "You look really shocked."

"No, no -" That was the last thing I wanted, to make him think I didn't understand. "I just... I..." Words were not my friends. They had deserted me. I looked away in confusion.

"I think I've struck a nerve here, haven't I," he said.

I nodded, taking a deep breath and focussing very hard on the bedsheet. I couldn't look at him. "If," I said in a low voice, "if you'd met me this time last year, you wouldn't... My face was such a mess."

I made myself look up at him. I think we were both holding our breath. I'd been absurdly scared to look him in the eye, but the second I did it was just, Yes. Yes, this person understands. I could see him thinking the same thing. It was an enormous relief. Hugging him was like coming home.

"My god," he said, "we even share the same neuroses."

I told him about dtM, showed him my stickers. He just got it, instantly, without me even having to explain. He hadn't known that it was a condition like Trich, but it didn't surprise him in the least.

"I think it's amazing, what you've done," he said. "Especially that you've done it for yourself and not because of somebody else or anything. You are genuinely amazing."

Was there ever a moment more perfect? I think not.

Angry

And now about Tom.

Sweet, cute, wonderful Tom.

Tom is a self-obsessed dick who can't even kiss me because he's too afraid to take his face away from the grindstone for long enough to do it.

I want a guy who is man enough to actually take me to bed. All he wants me for is to bat my eyelashes and wank his ego. While he pursues 'more important' things.

Bored now, sweetheart.

stopped counting stickers

WARNING, Bear with Sore Head

Man, did I ever get up on the wrong side of my bed this morning.

I don't know which came first, the pickies or the grumpies, but it's growing increasingly obvious to me that the two go hand in hand. Being grumpy makes me pick and picking makes me grumpy. No, that's inaccurate. Picking chills me out. Knowing what I've done, AGAIN, afterwards, is what gives me the grump.

My mum tried for years to tell me that I pick more when I get stressed out. Of course at the time I neither listened nor cared, and I certainly wasn't grateful for the observation. I only wanted her to shut the fuck up and stop reminding me how ugly I was.

Kelvin came home last night. He's been away for a week on holiday. I was looking forward to him coming home, and then when he did... I don't know. I had been hoping he would be as glad to see me, I guess, which was dumb, because who the hell is happy about coming back from holiday? Especially late at night after travelling all day. And then I felt really stupid and pathetic for wanting it to be a bigger deal than it was. For acting like a dumb puppy waiting for its master to come home.

I quarrelled with Leanne during the day, too, as much as anyone can quarrel with her, that is. She did her usual trick of turning into a total martyr at the first sign of crossed words. It drives me nuts when she does that. But maybe that's just because I'm cruising for a fight and she won't give me one. In any case, she'll now make a point of staying out of my way for a couple of days, like, "Oh, I'm just going to go to my room and listen to some music... I can see you're not in the mood for company, I might go out for a walk or something... I don't need to leave for another half hour but I'm just going to go sit in the car..." And make a big deal of putting herself out to accomodate what she thinks I want or need.

Lightbulb going on my head a second... Maybe she doesnt' do that to annoy me, or to prove that she's the nicer person, or to try and make me feel guilty. Maybe it's just that I'm not very pleasant to be around when I'm in a bad mood, and she doesn't like to come right out and say "I'm getting the fuck out of here so I don't have you put up with you being a moody bitch at me."

Marvellous. So actually, I'm the big bad. Now I'm even grumpier.

This is getting kind of off-topic. This is meant to be a blog for my dtMania, not for random rantings about whoever happens to have pissed me off at the time. That's what my diary is for. Although actually, I haven't written in my diary since I started this blog...

Anyway. I picked. Again. After four days Tue-Fri, I had a 'miss' day on Sat and a big fat 'X' day yesterday. I had a nasty sore one on my forehead and it just had to go. And then, because I was grumpy, I moved on to the next, and the next...

If I had stuck to my regime of look-free and touch-free, I wouldn't have even known it was there. I shouldn't have even known it was there. But it was so much easier not to look/touch when I knew there was nothing there but scabs. After a couple of days pick-free, I started obsessing over what fresh zits might be popping up all over my face... and by Sunday night I was back in front of the bathroom mirror, doing what I do.

Urgh.

I have come a long way. And now it feels like all I have been doing is stripping away the fur and the flesh on this thing that has me in its grasp, and so now it is just a cold hard shiny metal skeleton, and I can see it for exactly what it is, but that's no help because no matter how hard I struggle and wriggle, its claws are digging into me relentlessly and I simply cannot get away, however hard I may fight. I really feel like I am just fighting, fighting, fighting and not getting anywhere anymore. And I am tired. I am tired of the constant effort of fighting this monster. I may as well just quit wriggling and let it eat me. At least then I wouldn't be perpetually waiting to fuck up. Let's just get the fucking up over with, and go back to our daily lives.

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