[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for use of ableist slurs.]
I just remembered - the first time I did it, and why.
I mean, as I've mentioned already, I'd been scratching since forever. But that was about the limit of it, until I was, oh, I guess eleven or twelve. I used to buy this magazine called SHOUT!. I think they still sell it today. A kind of teen magazine for pre-teens who wanted to feel older than they were; a smaller, cheaper and tackier version of Sugar, giving away free lipsticks or hair pins or sequinned purses with every issue. And they had this article, one fortnight, on looking after your complexion.
You should never squeeze out your spots, they will heal faster if you leave them alone, read the first sentence. Well, that wasn't news; I figured every idiot knew that much. And who'd want to squeeze a spot anyway? That's the kind of thing that gross, greasy teenage boys do when nobody is looking. Yuck.
And then the next sentence, and the real point of the article: But if you feel you really must squeeze them, then this is how best to do it.
It wasn't just curiosity. This was meant to be a magazine for cool, pretty girls. The implication was that cool, pretty girls just have to get rid of that spot. That a compulsion to squeeze them out is healthy and normal, and that only an ugly retarded freak would leave it sitting there for the whole world to see.
I was tired of being a retarded freak. I guess I had started buying SHOUT! in the hope that maybe, just maybe, it could teach me to be a cool, pretty, popular kid.
Fuck you, SHOUT! magazine.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Happy Shiny Freckles
Lah!
Okay. So life is good. And it's nice to write that, because usually when I come back here to write something, it's because everything has gone horribly wrong. BUT! Posts here are not particularly regular - and it's VERY worth noting that, when I am not posting psychotic rantings, I'm really doing rather well ^_^
I have a week off work this week and I've been kinda bored sometimes during the day (but not going to the mirror just for something to do like I would have a couple years ago :P) so I visited the SPOM! board for the first time in ages. I realised just how long it had been since I was last there when I saw a private message that somebody had sent me way back in May! So I replied, and she replied, and the end result is that I am getting free copies of the novel "A New You" sent to me in the post, and I can give them to libraries and stuff and then more people can read this book and hopefully gain a better understanding and awareness of dtM! *dances* I feel all sexy and important! See me contribute stuffs!
For more information on the book "A New You", see this SPOM thread:
http://www.stoppickingonme.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4133
I mean it! Open it up in a new tab right now!
Also, on Monday evening I am finally going to take the SPOM! cards that Jane sent me (three months ago, lol) to my local doctor's surgery, as I last went for a checkup just before I received the cards, so this is the first time I've been to my doctor since. And I'm going to ask if I can leave them on the counter so people can take one, and thus further awarenesses shall be spread, oh yus >:D
This is AMAZING. When I first found out about this being an actual disorder, and not just me being a total fuck-up in my own special and disgusting little way, I did read some threads on message boards that made reference to raising awareness: giving lectures in schools, getting onto chat shows, documentaries, and so on and so on. And way back then, that was like, EEK. I mean, I appreciated that it was an excellent idea, but... something for OTHER people to do, you know? Because I couldn't possibly. I couldn't possibly stand up in front of all those people and tell them that no, I don't have chicken pox, and no, I don't have acne or any other kind of skin complaint, and no, I don't need to find 'the right face wash product for me' - couldn't possibly throw away every lie that I had ever let anyone believe and just tell them that I did it to myself, every night, and couldn't stop. The mere thought of it made me feel like a hunted rabbit.
And now... Why is it different now? Is it just because I don't look that way anymore, because my skin is now more often clear than not? Or is it because I am gaining confidence simply from knowing that I am beating this, not all at once, not with a magic cure, but day by day by day just not giving up and forgiving myself for the mistakes and keeping going, and then looking back every so often and going, "WOW! Look how far I came!"
I don't go to mirrors deliberately anymore. I can't remember the last time I did - maybe more than a year ago. I didn't realise that until a couple of days ago, and when I did, I made myself take a moment to just simply sit and feel enormously proud of myself. Focussing on the positive is very important - I think a large part of this disorder stems from being a perfectionist, from dismissing the things that go well as just 'normal' and making a huge deal out of the tiniest slip-up or the smallest blocked pore. We ignore the good and see only the bad. THIS is what needs changing.
Of course I do still make mistakes. The mistakes usually happen when I catch my reflection in passing - when I need to go to the bathroom and that big old mirror is just THERE. Caleb drew a smiley face in the corner of my bathroom mirror. A lot of the time, that helps some. And what's REALLY fantastic is that I am moving into a little studio flat of my own in a couple of weeks - and this means...
I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT WITH THE MIRRORS.
It's going to be amazing. When I looked around the place, I noted there was a large wall mirror in the hallway, and a small stand-up mirror on the shelf over the bathroom sink. Well they will both get put away in the big bathroom cupboard, faces against the wall, as my first act as tenant. Since I don't go to mirrors deliberately anymore, that ought to be enough - just to have them out of the way where they won't catch me unawares. I guess I will have to take one out to do my hair every morning so I don't turn up to work looking like I got dragged through a hedge backwards, but I am hoping this will be okay. Especially if I put it a few feet away from me - three cheers for being short-sighted.
Well! I think I am now going to go and find a little café somewhere and order myself a decaff cappuccino and some doorstep toast, and sit reading American Gods and watch the world go by. After all. I deserve to reward myself ^__^
Project Authenticity Editorial Note 18th Feb 2012:
'I feel all sexy and important! See me contribute stuffs!' --- (from the third paragraph)
I find it interesting, in retrospect, that I have always been so quick to crowbar a sexual implication into the expression of my feelings without really noticing what I'm doing. In addition to the above example, I can recall countless occasions when I have jestingly referred to myself as a prostitute when describing attributes of myself that I perceive as negative, or think that others will perceive as negative. Lazy whore. Sarcastic ho-bag. Silly tart. Greedy slut. The strong and completely unconscious connection I draw above between sexy and important is very telling, I think. At this time, in my mind, they were one and the same thing. When I felt important, I felt sexy. And when I failed at being sexy - which I considered to be the case the overwhelming majority of the time - I failed at being important, and thus became wholly insignificant in my own eyes. I very much doubt I am alone in this. I think vast legions of girls are growing up in a world that teaches them to value themselves this way.
Okay. So life is good. And it's nice to write that, because usually when I come back here to write something, it's because everything has gone horribly wrong. BUT! Posts here are not particularly regular - and it's VERY worth noting that, when I am not posting psychotic rantings, I'm really doing rather well ^_^
I have a week off work this week and I've been kinda bored sometimes during the day (but not going to the mirror just for something to do like I would have a couple years ago :P) so I visited the SPOM! board for the first time in ages. I realised just how long it had been since I was last there when I saw a private message that somebody had sent me way back in May! So I replied, and she replied, and the end result is that I am getting free copies of the novel "A New You" sent to me in the post, and I can give them to libraries and stuff and then more people can read this book and hopefully gain a better understanding and awareness of dtM! *dances* I feel all sexy and important! See me contribute stuffs!
For more information on the book "A New You", see this SPOM thread:
http://www.stoppickingonme.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4133
I mean it! Open it up in a new tab right now!
Also, on Monday evening I am finally going to take the SPOM! cards that Jane sent me (three months ago, lol) to my local doctor's surgery, as I last went for a checkup just before I received the cards, so this is the first time I've been to my doctor since. And I'm going to ask if I can leave them on the counter so people can take one, and thus further awarenesses shall be spread, oh yus >:D
This is AMAZING. When I first found out about this being an actual disorder, and not just me being a total fuck-up in my own special and disgusting little way, I did read some threads on message boards that made reference to raising awareness: giving lectures in schools, getting onto chat shows, documentaries, and so on and so on. And way back then, that was like, EEK. I mean, I appreciated that it was an excellent idea, but... something for OTHER people to do, you know? Because I couldn't possibly. I couldn't possibly stand up in front of all those people and tell them that no, I don't have chicken pox, and no, I don't have acne or any other kind of skin complaint, and no, I don't need to find 'the right face wash product for me' - couldn't possibly throw away every lie that I had ever let anyone believe and just tell them that I did it to myself, every night, and couldn't stop. The mere thought of it made me feel like a hunted rabbit.
And now... Why is it different now? Is it just because I don't look that way anymore, because my skin is now more often clear than not? Or is it because I am gaining confidence simply from knowing that I am beating this, not all at once, not with a magic cure, but day by day by day just not giving up and forgiving myself for the mistakes and keeping going, and then looking back every so often and going, "WOW! Look how far I came!"
I don't go to mirrors deliberately anymore. I can't remember the last time I did - maybe more than a year ago. I didn't realise that until a couple of days ago, and when I did, I made myself take a moment to just simply sit and feel enormously proud of myself. Focussing on the positive is very important - I think a large part of this disorder stems from being a perfectionist, from dismissing the things that go well as just 'normal' and making a huge deal out of the tiniest slip-up or the smallest blocked pore. We ignore the good and see only the bad. THIS is what needs changing.
Of course I do still make mistakes. The mistakes usually happen when I catch my reflection in passing - when I need to go to the bathroom and that big old mirror is just THERE. Caleb drew a smiley face in the corner of my bathroom mirror. A lot of the time, that helps some. And what's REALLY fantastic is that I am moving into a little studio flat of my own in a couple of weeks - and this means...
I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT WITH THE MIRRORS.
It's going to be amazing. When I looked around the place, I noted there was a large wall mirror in the hallway, and a small stand-up mirror on the shelf over the bathroom sink. Well they will both get put away in the big bathroom cupboard, faces against the wall, as my first act as tenant. Since I don't go to mirrors deliberately anymore, that ought to be enough - just to have them out of the way where they won't catch me unawares. I guess I will have to take one out to do my hair every morning so I don't turn up to work looking like I got dragged through a hedge backwards, but I am hoping this will be okay. Especially if I put it a few feet away from me - three cheers for being short-sighted.
Well! I think I am now going to go and find a little café somewhere and order myself a decaff cappuccino and some doorstep toast, and sit reading American Gods and watch the world go by. After all. I deserve to reward myself ^__^
Project Authenticity Editorial Note 18th Feb 2012:
'I feel all sexy and important! See me contribute stuffs!' --- (from the third paragraph)
I find it interesting, in retrospect, that I have always been so quick to crowbar a sexual implication into the expression of my feelings without really noticing what I'm doing. In addition to the above example, I can recall countless occasions when I have jestingly referred to myself as a prostitute when describing attributes of myself that I perceive as negative, or think that others will perceive as negative. Lazy whore. Sarcastic ho-bag. Silly tart. Greedy slut. The strong and completely unconscious connection I draw above between sexy and important is very telling, I think. At this time, in my mind, they were one and the same thing. When I felt important, I felt sexy. And when I failed at being sexy - which I considered to be the case the overwhelming majority of the time - I failed at being important, and thus became wholly insignificant in my own eyes. I very much doubt I am alone in this. I think vast legions of girls are growing up in a world that teaches them to value themselves this way.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Everyone Else
Everyone else is so perfect and beautiful
Everyone else is so thin
Everyone else has such bright glossy hair
And such smooth irresistible skin
Nobody else ever wanted for normal
So bad that they wished on a star
Everyone else plays with makeup for pleasure
And not to conceal who they are
Everyone else is so happy and confident
Everyone else has it all
Nobody else puts their hair in their face
And tries hard to look boring and small
There are times I am certain that everyone else
Must be feeling revulsion and pity
But everyone else is most often just asking
Why everyone else looks so pretty.
Everyone else is so thin
Everyone else has such bright glossy hair
And such smooth irresistible skin
Nobody else ever wanted for normal
So bad that they wished on a star
Everyone else plays with makeup for pleasure
And not to conceal who they are
Everyone else is so happy and confident
Everyone else has it all
Nobody else puts their hair in their face
And tries hard to look boring and small
There are times I am certain that everyone else
Must be feeling revulsion and pity
But everyone else is most often just asking
Why everyone else looks so pretty.
Monday, April 28, 2008
LOL @ ME
[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for trichotillomania aka hair pulling.]
Oh. My. Gawd.
So I gave up caffeinated coffee because I read that reducing my caffeine would help my skin be clearer. And then I felt a bit shit and germy this morning, so at college today I've been drinking STRONG coffee with EXTRA sugar, ALL FUCKING DAY.
I am so having the world's greatest caffeine/sugar crash XD;;
Okay! Plan of doing-ment!
1) Make a sammich.
2) Calm the fuck down.
3) Get on with some homework.
4) Stay away from the little brown beans!
roflrofl
Oh. My. Gawd.
So I gave up caffeinated coffee because I read that reducing my caffeine would help my skin be clearer. And then I felt a bit shit and germy this morning, so at college today I've been drinking STRONG coffee with EXTRA sugar, ALL FUCKING DAY.
I am so having the world's greatest caffeine/sugar crash XD;;
Okay! Plan of doing-ment!
1) Make a sammich.
2) Calm the fuck down.
3) Get on with some homework.
4) Stay away from the little brown beans!
roflrofl
I Feel Sick :S
BLLLAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH.
THAT's how the last couple of weeks has gone.
I'm not even sure I want to write. I really would like to just beat my head against a brick wall and then sleep for a very long time.
I seemed to decide somewhere around the start of last week that it didn't matter. I was half off the bandwaggon and meaning to get more serious with myself again. And then a whole bunch of SHIT happened and I decided FUCK IT, I'll get back on the bandwaggon AFTER I've sorted all this shit out, and in the meantime I don't give a flying fuck.
So I went to town on myself. I have a massive scab in the middle of my chin that's been there all week, and every day I tell myself I'm going to leave it alone and let it heal now, and every day I rip it off my face before ten AM. And the rest ain't so prettty either.
I'm so pissed off right now. I think I really need to go hit something. Writing this is not making me feel any better. Just more frustrated.
It's not even the kind of pissed off that is going to keep me away from the mirror tonight. If anything, it's the kind that's going to keep me going back.
And tweezers. They've come back out too. I told myself that I would do it instead of picking, but that's a fucking lie. It was calm and controlled, at first. And then I got myself into such a frenzy that my hands were shaking and I couldn't aim properly or pluck fast enough and there was SO FUCKING MUCH OF IT and it ALL HAD TO FUCKING GO and then I had to drop the tweezers and run out of the bathroom because I was going so crazy with frustration at not being able to do it fast enough that I thought I might just end up stabbing myself with them and that would not have been good.
It's okay to tweeze, I told myself to start with, it's a good distraction from picking, just don't let it become as much of a problem as picking is, and you'll be fine. And here I am on a Monday afternoon, hiding in my parent's bathroom, making crazy screaming noises inside my head about ripping my whole groin out with a pair of tweezers.
How the fuck am I here? After everything, after all this time and effort, after believing I was mostly on top of this, HOW THE FUCK AM I HERE?
THAT's how the last couple of weeks has gone.
I'm not even sure I want to write. I really would like to just beat my head against a brick wall and then sleep for a very long time.
I seemed to decide somewhere around the start of last week that it didn't matter. I was half off the bandwaggon and meaning to get more serious with myself again. And then a whole bunch of SHIT happened and I decided FUCK IT, I'll get back on the bandwaggon AFTER I've sorted all this shit out, and in the meantime I don't give a flying fuck.
So I went to town on myself. I have a massive scab in the middle of my chin that's been there all week, and every day I tell myself I'm going to leave it alone and let it heal now, and every day I rip it off my face before ten AM. And the rest ain't so prettty either.
I'm so pissed off right now. I think I really need to go hit something. Writing this is not making me feel any better. Just more frustrated.
It's not even the kind of pissed off that is going to keep me away from the mirror tonight. If anything, it's the kind that's going to keep me going back.
And tweezers. They've come back out too. I told myself that I would do it instead of picking, but that's a fucking lie. It was calm and controlled, at first. And then I got myself into such a frenzy that my hands were shaking and I couldn't aim properly or pluck fast enough and there was SO FUCKING MUCH OF IT and it ALL HAD TO FUCKING GO and then I had to drop the tweezers and run out of the bathroom because I was going so crazy with frustration at not being able to do it fast enough that I thought I might just end up stabbing myself with them and that would not have been good.
It's okay to tweeze, I told myself to start with, it's a good distraction from picking, just don't let it become as much of a problem as picking is, and you'll be fine. And here I am on a Monday afternoon, hiding in my parent's bathroom, making crazy screaming noises inside my head about ripping my whole groin out with a pair of tweezers.
How the fuck am I here? After everything, after all this time and effort, after believing I was mostly on top of this, HOW THE FUCK AM I HERE?
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Repairing the Mirror Relationship?
Wow, I got a comment from Maysun, my first ever! Thanks Maysun ^__^ It sure did perk me up to read that. It was good advice too – I can’t believe now that I didn’t even think about the mirrors in the changing rooms. Maybe if I had been better prepared mentally, I wouldn’t have slipped up.
I tried something on Tuesday that I think worked rather well. I was going out to dinner with all my work friends and was doing hair, putting on make-up etc, and of course I needed the mirror to do that. I thought about using a small hand-mirror in a dimly-lit room, but then decided to adopt another tactic instead. I closed the door of the bathroom cabinet (I have been keeping it open so the mirror in the door isn’t showing), I looked at my reflection, and I deliberately made myself look for things I liked about what I saw.
I like my eyes. They are a greeny-brown – my mother calls them hazel – and they are really pretty and unusual. I like my mouth; it’s pale pink and quite little, almost a button-mouth. My chin is small and pointy, giving my face a heart-shaped effect. A cute little pixie-chin. My freckles are just noticeable under my eyes and along my hairline.
I spent about fifteen or twenty seconds just logging all of this mentally, all these things I liked about my face. And then I started doing my hair and my make-up. Every time I found myself drawn towards an imperfection, I would pull myself back to finding things I liked.
I didn’t pick. I was in front of that mirror for about ten to fifteen minutes, and I did not pick.
I did the same yesterday morning and this morning when doing my hair for work, and both times went well. I practised saying to myself, out loud, “You are beautiful.” Telling myself aloud all the things I liked about my face. I felt a little stupid. But it seemed to work.
I mostly still keep the mirrors out of sight, because I still have a lot of impulses to look for the wrong reasons. But I’m hoping this can be some kind of ‘repairing my relationship with mirrors’ therapy that will help me to cope when I go back home on Sunday, to the bathroom mirror that I can’t do anything about.
On the other hand, I am a little worried that this is just some half-baked scheme that I am using as an excuse to look at my reflection when I really didn’t ought to let myself do it at all. But – life is a learning curve, ne? If it leads me back to picking, I’ll know it was the wrong thing to do, and then I won’t do it again.
So. Feeling positive!
I tried something on Tuesday that I think worked rather well. I was going out to dinner with all my work friends and was doing hair, putting on make-up etc, and of course I needed the mirror to do that. I thought about using a small hand-mirror in a dimly-lit room, but then decided to adopt another tactic instead. I closed the door of the bathroom cabinet (I have been keeping it open so the mirror in the door isn’t showing), I looked at my reflection, and I deliberately made myself look for things I liked about what I saw.
I like my eyes. They are a greeny-brown – my mother calls them hazel – and they are really pretty and unusual. I like my mouth; it’s pale pink and quite little, almost a button-mouth. My chin is small and pointy, giving my face a heart-shaped effect. A cute little pixie-chin. My freckles are just noticeable under my eyes and along my hairline.
I spent about fifteen or twenty seconds just logging all of this mentally, all these things I liked about my face. And then I started doing my hair and my make-up. Every time I found myself drawn towards an imperfection, I would pull myself back to finding things I liked.
I didn’t pick. I was in front of that mirror for about ten to fifteen minutes, and I did not pick.
I did the same yesterday morning and this morning when doing my hair for work, and both times went well. I practised saying to myself, out loud, “You are beautiful.” Telling myself aloud all the things I liked about my face. I felt a little stupid. But it seemed to work.
I mostly still keep the mirrors out of sight, because I still have a lot of impulses to look for the wrong reasons. But I’m hoping this can be some kind of ‘repairing my relationship with mirrors’ therapy that will help me to cope when I go back home on Sunday, to the bathroom mirror that I can’t do anything about.
On the other hand, I am a little worried that this is just some half-baked scheme that I am using as an excuse to look at my reflection when I really didn’t ought to let myself do it at all. But – life is a learning curve, ne? If it leads me back to picking, I’ll know it was the wrong thing to do, and then I won’t do it again.
So. Feeling positive!
Monday, February 04, 2008
Easy Good, Easy Bad
Okay. Bungalow review time.
I have actually been pleasantly surprised at how easy I have found it to be good over the last eight days. When I came here for a fortnight last February, I was desperately trying to quit picking, but had not been working at it for long and was still finding it extremely difficult – also I had not yet found dtM on Wikipedia or the lovely SPOM board; those discoveries came in March. So, in short, this time last year I sucked mighty ass at not picking during my fortnight at the bungalow. In fourteen days I don’t believe I hit more than four stickers.
As I recall, I think I did cover the mirrors back then, but gave in to the compulsion to ‘check how my skin was doing’ all too frequently, which led to the compulsion to pick. This time it’s been different. I put the mirrors away, and left them alone. I get urges to look at my reflection, sure, but it’s not like it was a year ago. I just say ‘no’ inside my head, and go and do something else.
On Saturday, I went on a mega clothes shopping spree. I’ve needed to for a while; I had gotten desperately short of smart clothes for work. I went into the first shop, psyching myself up for a long day of shopping ahead – I don’t particularly love shopping to be honest, it’s so time-consuming trying everything on and it starts to annoy me after an hour or so. But anyway, I grabbed a load of things I liked the look of, headed for the fitting rooms, locked the cubicle door behind me…
And was confronted by my reflection for the first time in a week. Oh god. How had this failed to occur to me? I was going to be spending a very large part of the day locked in private little spaces with mirrors all over the god damn walls.
I took a deep breath, and tried everything on very fast. I was sharply aware of a spot on my cheek that I had managed to mostly ignore for the last couple of days. It was screaming at me in my head, and the mirror felt like gravity.
I looked. I looked very closely, but I did not touch. I was good.
Next shop. Another mirror. I looked again. I touched it, briefly. I closed my fingertips around it, and then snatched them away. I would do this. I would beat this. I would not give in.
Next shop. Looking. Touching. And then it was happening and I knew I should stop but somehow I didn’t, and then it was all over and a raised red blotch was all that was left.
Damn it all to hell.
I couldn’t believe it. I had been doing SO well! And then a mirror had happened, and my resolve had utterly fallen apart. I knew that covering the mirrors would be a help. But it wasn’t until then that I realised how easy it was to do well when there were no mirrors, and how easy it was to fall down when a mirror was put in front of me.
All the good that I am doing here in the bungalow is going to count for nothing when I get back home, if I cannot find a way to fight the mirrors. Because I cannot get away from them there. And I will fall down again and again and again, when I could be doing so well, if only those fucking mirrors weren’t there!
How the hell do I work around this? How?
I have actually been pleasantly surprised at how easy I have found it to be good over the last eight days. When I came here for a fortnight last February, I was desperately trying to quit picking, but had not been working at it for long and was still finding it extremely difficult – also I had not yet found dtM on Wikipedia or the lovely SPOM board; those discoveries came in March. So, in short, this time last year I sucked mighty ass at not picking during my fortnight at the bungalow. In fourteen days I don’t believe I hit more than four stickers.
As I recall, I think I did cover the mirrors back then, but gave in to the compulsion to ‘check how my skin was doing’ all too frequently, which led to the compulsion to pick. This time it’s been different. I put the mirrors away, and left them alone. I get urges to look at my reflection, sure, but it’s not like it was a year ago. I just say ‘no’ inside my head, and go and do something else.
On Saturday, I went on a mega clothes shopping spree. I’ve needed to for a while; I had gotten desperately short of smart clothes for work. I went into the first shop, psyching myself up for a long day of shopping ahead – I don’t particularly love shopping to be honest, it’s so time-consuming trying everything on and it starts to annoy me after an hour or so. But anyway, I grabbed a load of things I liked the look of, headed for the fitting rooms, locked the cubicle door behind me…
And was confronted by my reflection for the first time in a week. Oh god. How had this failed to occur to me? I was going to be spending a very large part of the day locked in private little spaces with mirrors all over the god damn walls.
I took a deep breath, and tried everything on very fast. I was sharply aware of a spot on my cheek that I had managed to mostly ignore for the last couple of days. It was screaming at me in my head, and the mirror felt like gravity.
I looked. I looked very closely, but I did not touch. I was good.
Next shop. Another mirror. I looked again. I touched it, briefly. I closed my fingertips around it, and then snatched them away. I would do this. I would beat this. I would not give in.
Next shop. Looking. Touching. And then it was happening and I knew I should stop but somehow I didn’t, and then it was all over and a raised red blotch was all that was left.
Damn it all to hell.
I couldn’t believe it. I had been doing SO well! And then a mirror had happened, and my resolve had utterly fallen apart. I knew that covering the mirrors would be a help. But it wasn’t until then that I realised how easy it was to do well when there were no mirrors, and how easy it was to fall down when a mirror was put in front of me.
All the good that I am doing here in the bungalow is going to count for nothing when I get back home, if I cannot find a way to fight the mirrors. Because I cannot get away from them there. And I will fall down again and again and again, when I could be doing so well, if only those fucking mirrors weren’t there!
How the hell do I work around this? How?
Friday, February 01, 2008
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.
***** : 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.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
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*
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*
Sunday, January 27, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, April 27, 2007
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
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
Monday, April 23, 2007
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
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
Friday, April 20, 2007
A Sudden Flash of Realisation
Okay. I'm not healed. I'm a long way from it. In fact, I probably never will be fully healed, in the sense that I will always have to guard against a relapse, most likely for the rest of my life. But I suddenly realised, today, how much progress I've made.
I was passing the mirror in the hall this morning - okay, I know I'm supposed to be look-free. But I'm glad I took that quick glance in passing, because otherwise I wouldn't have seen what I did. A really huge and disgusting scab that I inflicted on myself on Monday evening, was healed to the point of just being a big flake of white skin attached to my face, and a couple of smaller ones were the same. I haven't been touching and I haven't washed my face since I showered on Tuesday, so the drying skin never got knocked off. I never even knew about it, and I was probably walking around looking like that for all of Thursday in school. It looked WEIRD. I picked it off, just because it genuinely wasn't a scab anymore and looked like I had eczema on my face or something.
The picking felt really strange.
And that was when I realised that I hadn't picked - I'm talking about actual fingernail scab-picking, not popping spots - for ages and ages. I hadn't even thought about it. The compulsion to squeeze out my comedones and clogged pores was so strong, and it was taking all my willpower to resist it, I just completely forgot all about picking at scabs.
Given that picking scabs is how this all started, that's a pretty big deal. As a little kid, ie birth to puberty, I was picking ALL the friggin time - face, arms, legs, body, I didn't care. That was the original habit. Popping zits came later, in my teens. I'm still struggling to rid myself of that. But the original habit is pretty much licked.
That's amazing. Not just for itself, but also for the message it gives me about the other half of this problem:
I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.
clever girl, way to go; three stickers in a row
I was passing the mirror in the hall this morning - okay, I know I'm supposed to be look-free. But I'm glad I took that quick glance in passing, because otherwise I wouldn't have seen what I did. A really huge and disgusting scab that I inflicted on myself on Monday evening, was healed to the point of just being a big flake of white skin attached to my face, and a couple of smaller ones were the same. I haven't been touching and I haven't washed my face since I showered on Tuesday, so the drying skin never got knocked off. I never even knew about it, and I was probably walking around looking like that for all of Thursday in school. It looked WEIRD. I picked it off, just because it genuinely wasn't a scab anymore and looked like I had eczema on my face or something.
The picking felt really strange.
And that was when I realised that I hadn't picked - I'm talking about actual fingernail scab-picking, not popping spots - for ages and ages. I hadn't even thought about it. The compulsion to squeeze out my comedones and clogged pores was so strong, and it was taking all my willpower to resist it, I just completely forgot all about picking at scabs.
Given that picking scabs is how this all started, that's a pretty big deal. As a little kid, ie birth to puberty, I was picking ALL the friggin time - face, arms, legs, body, I didn't care. That was the original habit. Popping zits came later, in my teens. I'm still struggling to rid myself of that. But the original habit is pretty much licked.
That's amazing. Not just for itself, but also for the message it gives me about the other half of this problem:
I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.
clever girl, way to go; three stickers in a row
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A Lighter and a Pack of Twenty
[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for comparisons to quitting smoking.]
Why is it that I can never get onto the StopPickingOnMe! forum on my lunch hour? It works okay at ten to nine in the a.m. But one ó clock - forget it. I wanted to get on there to quote from a thread that really inspired me a couple of days ago. Somebody was making the point that part of what makes the habit so hard to break, is that we carry our face and our hands with us everywhere we go, and there's not much avoiding mirrors either. We have to be strong all the time, every second of every day, because half a second's weakness is all it takes to muff it up. It's like a smoker trying to quit, whilst keeping a lighter and a pack of twenty in his back pocket the whole time. Or like an alcoholic trying to dry out with a six-pack still in the fridge.
It was an amazing relief to me to realise the truth in that perspective, because I felt so down on myself when Kelvin quit smoking pretty much just like that *snap*, and left me to eat his habit-breaking dust. I don't want to say it was easier for him because that's probably not true. Nicotine-dependency is a chemical addiction, and that's a can of worms that I can't claim to know anything about. But he was able to approach his problem with the tactic of putting his habit out of his reach, at least by a five minute walk to the shop. To fall off his wagon, he would have had to make a conscious decision to put his shoes and jacket on and walk to the little corner-store for a packet of fags. All I had to do was absently put my hand to my face when I was thinking about something else. The feeling of all those little lumps and bumps under my fingertips drove me instantly nuts.
I don't wish to downplay Kelvin's achievement, though - his addiction wasn't always so far out of his reach, to be fair. His workmates smoke like chimneys, and during the day he could have sponged a cigarette in less time than it took to ask. But he didn't. So all credit to him. But recognising the reasons why breaking my habit is difficult for me, all adds strings to my bow when it comes to being stood beside a mirror, trying to find the willpower to not look.
That's what it comes down to in the end, I think. Not looking. I'm learning more about how to be pickfree, all the time. Every time I fall down, I learn something new about how and why it happened, and how to avoid that particular pitfall next time. I started out, at New Year, by deciding not to pick. That didn't go so well, because I could feel the spots every time I touched my face and it was torture not to deal with them. I fell down. At the beginning of March, I resolved to combat the problem by going touch-free - this was still just over a week before I found dtM on Wikipedia and learned all about it, before I had heard of 'touch-free' as a phrase. That went pretty well for quite a while. Sixteen days, w00t! But I could still see the most obvious of the little bastards every time I looked in the mirror, and in the end that wore me down too.
It's like a weed. It needs taking out at the root or it will just grow back. And the root of the problem is not the compulsion. The compulsion is the symptom. The root is the obsession. I need to remove the obsession from my mind. I need to deny myself all contact with my face - both tactile and visual.
If I don't see it and I don't touch it, I won't know it's there to scratch it.
It's hard-line approach. But I've realised that I've been doing this thing half-assed and it hasn't been working - not in the long term, anyway. It's easy to think, when I have seven or eight stickers in a row, that I'm strong enough to just look without picking. And probably, for that one time, I am. But then over the next few days I look more and more often, and the obsession builds, and the compulsion gets stronger... And then I fall down flat on my blotchy weeping face. And I think, "Dammit! How did that happen?" Like an idiot.
Even when I just want to look to see how amazingly well I'm doing, and admire the clearness of my skin, I know that my eyes will uncontrollably zoom in on the tiniest little blemish disrupting the harmony of my complexion. And when I find one - which I will, even if I have to pretend to wonder if that freckle might really be a blocked pore - when I find one, that little place inside my mind will start its relentless irresistible itching, slowly driving me insane until I gouge the flesh from my face and leave a gaping red sore there.
So, look-free. It's the future. And I'm going to be 100% touch-free too, as opposed to March when I was washing my face three time a day and running my hands all over that maddening-ness. If I really want to wash my face, I'll take a shower. My complexion isn't actually greasy. It doesn't need washing every day, regular washing with water only dries my skin out and makes it want to produce more oil, which causes more spots. I could moisturise - but then I'd have my hands all over my face and I'd be back to square one. And why bother to constantly dry it out and then remoisturise, when I could just leave it alone to be perfectly happy at its natural balance?
No touching. No looking. If I can break the obsession then the compulsions will take care of themselves. This is as close as I can possibly get to throwing the lighter and the pack of twenty off a cliff. My face needs to stop existing to me.
clever girl, way to go; one sticker in a row
Why is it that I can never get onto the StopPickingOnMe! forum on my lunch hour? It works okay at ten to nine in the a.m. But one ó clock - forget it. I wanted to get on there to quote from a thread that really inspired me a couple of days ago. Somebody was making the point that part of what makes the habit so hard to break, is that we carry our face and our hands with us everywhere we go, and there's not much avoiding mirrors either. We have to be strong all the time, every second of every day, because half a second's weakness is all it takes to muff it up. It's like a smoker trying to quit, whilst keeping a lighter and a pack of twenty in his back pocket the whole time. Or like an alcoholic trying to dry out with a six-pack still in the fridge.
It was an amazing relief to me to realise the truth in that perspective, because I felt so down on myself when Kelvin quit smoking pretty much just like that *snap*, and left me to eat his habit-breaking dust. I don't want to say it was easier for him because that's probably not true. Nicotine-dependency is a chemical addiction, and that's a can of worms that I can't claim to know anything about. But he was able to approach his problem with the tactic of putting his habit out of his reach, at least by a five minute walk to the shop. To fall off his wagon, he would have had to make a conscious decision to put his shoes and jacket on and walk to the little corner-store for a packet of fags. All I had to do was absently put my hand to my face when I was thinking about something else. The feeling of all those little lumps and bumps under my fingertips drove me instantly nuts.
I don't wish to downplay Kelvin's achievement, though - his addiction wasn't always so far out of his reach, to be fair. His workmates smoke like chimneys, and during the day he could have sponged a cigarette in less time than it took to ask. But he didn't. So all credit to him. But recognising the reasons why breaking my habit is difficult for me, all adds strings to my bow when it comes to being stood beside a mirror, trying to find the willpower to not look.
That's what it comes down to in the end, I think. Not looking. I'm learning more about how to be pickfree, all the time. Every time I fall down, I learn something new about how and why it happened, and how to avoid that particular pitfall next time. I started out, at New Year, by deciding not to pick. That didn't go so well, because I could feel the spots every time I touched my face and it was torture not to deal with them. I fell down. At the beginning of March, I resolved to combat the problem by going touch-free - this was still just over a week before I found dtM on Wikipedia and learned all about it, before I had heard of 'touch-free' as a phrase. That went pretty well for quite a while. Sixteen days, w00t! But I could still see the most obvious of the little bastards every time I looked in the mirror, and in the end that wore me down too.
It's like a weed. It needs taking out at the root or it will just grow back. And the root of the problem is not the compulsion. The compulsion is the symptom. The root is the obsession. I need to remove the obsession from my mind. I need to deny myself all contact with my face - both tactile and visual.
If I don't see it and I don't touch it, I won't know it's there to scratch it.
It's hard-line approach. But I've realised that I've been doing this thing half-assed and it hasn't been working - not in the long term, anyway. It's easy to think, when I have seven or eight stickers in a row, that I'm strong enough to just look without picking. And probably, for that one time, I am. But then over the next few days I look more and more often, and the obsession builds, and the compulsion gets stronger... And then I fall down flat on my blotchy weeping face. And I think, "Dammit! How did that happen?" Like an idiot.
Even when I just want to look to see how amazingly well I'm doing, and admire the clearness of my skin, I know that my eyes will uncontrollably zoom in on the tiniest little blemish disrupting the harmony of my complexion. And when I find one - which I will, even if I have to pretend to wonder if that freckle might really be a blocked pore - when I find one, that little place inside my mind will start its relentless irresistible itching, slowly driving me insane until I gouge the flesh from my face and leave a gaping red sore there.
So, look-free. It's the future. And I'm going to be 100% touch-free too, as opposed to March when I was washing my face three time a day and running my hands all over that maddening-ness. If I really want to wash my face, I'll take a shower. My complexion isn't actually greasy. It doesn't need washing every day, regular washing with water only dries my skin out and makes it want to produce more oil, which causes more spots. I could moisturise - but then I'd have my hands all over my face and I'd be back to square one. And why bother to constantly dry it out and then remoisturise, when I could just leave it alone to be perfectly happy at its natural balance?
No touching. No looking. If I can break the obsession then the compulsions will take care of themselves. This is as close as I can possibly get to throwing the lighter and the pack of twenty off a cliff. My face needs to stop existing to me.
clever girl, way to go; one sticker in a row
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Not the Best of Weeks
[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for thoughts of self-harm.]
I haven’t had any stickers on my calendar for over a week now. I’ve only had one so far this month. One lonely sticker on the second of April, followed by a very long stretch of blankness. Most of those blank spaces should in fact have big nasty black crosses on them, on account of actual mirror time rather than just non-visual fiddling. But I don’t draw those crosses on until I’ve earned another sticker to follow them up with – it’s just too depressing to look at otherwise, and I’ll only end up feeling even more discouraged than I already do.
I don’t know what the hell happened. It was a bit on-and-off for the last half of March, after I fell off my sixteen-sticker straight. I figured I’d get back into it again at the start of April – new month, clean sheet on the calendar, no discouraging misses to look at. But the first day in April was a miss. The second was a hit… and then, miss X X X X X X miss.
Where does willpower come from? Why is it that sometimes it is right there, keeping me strong, and then at other times I just can’t find any resolve anywhere? This last week I’ve woken up every morning promising myself that I’ll be good, but even as I make that promise I know it’s a lie. And sure enough, ten minutes later, I’m trancing out in front of the mirror. How can I make myself mean it, when I promise myself not to pick? Why does something which IS my choice, feel so much like something that happens to me which I have no control over? I can screw up my eyes and make fervent promises to myself until kingdom come – why is it that sometimes they feel real, and other times I just can’t make them seem solid in my head, even as I’m saying them?
I thought about going back to cutting. But I don’t think I’m going to do that again. For one thing, warmer weather is coming now and I don’t want to be stuck in long sleeves. I also don’t want to take a jumper off without thinking and then suddenly, say, my mother, erupts into screaming hysterics at the sight of my mutilated skin. And then I keep thinking of Kelvin saying, “You do realise that’s really stupid, don’t you?” Yes. Yes, I do. I don’t really want to go back to it.
One thing that has really pleased me, though, is that my freckles are coming back. I had a bit of a mirror-fest a couple of nights ago, but as my skin has gotten a lot clearer lately, there wasn’t a whole lot to mess with, so I didn’t do much damage – and my other calendar-crosses were for quick-picks at the spot which was annoying me most at the time. So, although I have some scabby marks right now, my complexion as a whole is much improved – the pink hyperpigmentation is beginning to recede, and my freckles are coming back, just under my eyes and below my hairline. They should be sprinkled right across my forehead and cheeks, if photographs of me as a child are anything to go by, but it’ll be a long time – months, maybe years, I should imagine – before they’re back in full force.
Talking of photos of me when I was ickle, I was looking through the family album this weekend and I made a couple of little discoveries. The first was a picture of me when I was a babe-in-arms, probably six months old or less. I had a little scab on my left cheek. Even as a tiny baby, I was scratching at myself! I knew it had been a habit for as long as I could remember, but to see that I had been doing it at such a young age was a bit of a shock. But secondly, I found a school photo of myself when I was about seven. It was a summer picture, I was wearing my blue chequered school dress and my grinning face was plastered in freckles – and not one red mark. It is, quite literally, THE ONLY school (or even nursery!) photo of me with a clear complexion. In every single one of the others, I have a scabby mark somewhere on my face. But this one – beautiful. I’ve brought it home with me to stick on my bedroom wall, as something of a goal to aim for I guess. I want those freckles back.
I miss Polly. I want to tell her about all of this, so much, because I think she is possibly the one person who might take me seriously, and believe that it isn’t as easy for me as ‘just stop’. I could really do with talking to her. But she is about to start her final term of uni, and she doesn’t have time for cross-country visits. I don’t really want to talk about this over the phone or MSN. And the other thing is – I sort of want to surprise her. It’s a really motivating idea to think of getting off the train and hugging her and hearing her say, “Oh my god, Tee, what happened to your face? You look really well!” I practically hug myself with anticipation every time I think of it. And I have got to make it happen if it bloody well kills me.
clever girl, way to go; zero stickers in a row
I haven’t had any stickers on my calendar for over a week now. I’ve only had one so far this month. One lonely sticker on the second of April, followed by a very long stretch of blankness. Most of those blank spaces should in fact have big nasty black crosses on them, on account of actual mirror time rather than just non-visual fiddling. But I don’t draw those crosses on until I’ve earned another sticker to follow them up with – it’s just too depressing to look at otherwise, and I’ll only end up feeling even more discouraged than I already do.
I don’t know what the hell happened. It was a bit on-and-off for the last half of March, after I fell off my sixteen-sticker straight. I figured I’d get back into it again at the start of April – new month, clean sheet on the calendar, no discouraging misses to look at. But the first day in April was a miss. The second was a hit… and then, miss X X X X X X miss.
Where does willpower come from? Why is it that sometimes it is right there, keeping me strong, and then at other times I just can’t find any resolve anywhere? This last week I’ve woken up every morning promising myself that I’ll be good, but even as I make that promise I know it’s a lie. And sure enough, ten minutes later, I’m trancing out in front of the mirror. How can I make myself mean it, when I promise myself not to pick? Why does something which IS my choice, feel so much like something that happens to me which I have no control over? I can screw up my eyes and make fervent promises to myself until kingdom come – why is it that sometimes they feel real, and other times I just can’t make them seem solid in my head, even as I’m saying them?
I thought about going back to cutting. But I don’t think I’m going to do that again. For one thing, warmer weather is coming now and I don’t want to be stuck in long sleeves. I also don’t want to take a jumper off without thinking and then suddenly, say, my mother, erupts into screaming hysterics at the sight of my mutilated skin. And then I keep thinking of Kelvin saying, “You do realise that’s really stupid, don’t you?” Yes. Yes, I do. I don’t really want to go back to it.
One thing that has really pleased me, though, is that my freckles are coming back. I had a bit of a mirror-fest a couple of nights ago, but as my skin has gotten a lot clearer lately, there wasn’t a whole lot to mess with, so I didn’t do much damage – and my other calendar-crosses were for quick-picks at the spot which was annoying me most at the time. So, although I have some scabby marks right now, my complexion as a whole is much improved – the pink hyperpigmentation is beginning to recede, and my freckles are coming back, just under my eyes and below my hairline. They should be sprinkled right across my forehead and cheeks, if photographs of me as a child are anything to go by, but it’ll be a long time – months, maybe years, I should imagine – before they’re back in full force.
Talking of photos of me when I was ickle, I was looking through the family album this weekend and I made a couple of little discoveries. The first was a picture of me when I was a babe-in-arms, probably six months old or less. I had a little scab on my left cheek. Even as a tiny baby, I was scratching at myself! I knew it had been a habit for as long as I could remember, but to see that I had been doing it at such a young age was a bit of a shock. But secondly, I found a school photo of myself when I was about seven. It was a summer picture, I was wearing my blue chequered school dress and my grinning face was plastered in freckles – and not one red mark. It is, quite literally, THE ONLY school (or even nursery!) photo of me with a clear complexion. In every single one of the others, I have a scabby mark somewhere on my face. But this one – beautiful. I’ve brought it home with me to stick on my bedroom wall, as something of a goal to aim for I guess. I want those freckles back.
I miss Polly. I want to tell her about all of this, so much, because I think she is possibly the one person who might take me seriously, and believe that it isn’t as easy for me as ‘just stop’. I could really do with talking to her. But she is about to start her final term of uni, and she doesn’t have time for cross-country visits. I don’t really want to talk about this over the phone or MSN. And the other thing is – I sort of want to surprise her. It’s a really motivating idea to think of getting off the train and hugging her and hearing her say, “Oh my god, Tee, what happened to your face? You look really well!” I practically hug myself with anticipation every time I think of it. And I have got to make it happen if it bloody well kills me.
clever girl, way to go; zero stickers in a row
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
When You Fall Off A Horse...
I dipped it. Saturday morning. I had a total monster coming up on my forehead and it had been driving me nuts for two or three days. Hadn't even come to a head or gone red; it just sat there beneath my skin, feeling sore and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Utter torture.
Friday was a bit of a stressful day. I was near the end of a really long blogpost, and suddenly the page refreshed for apparently no reason and I lost everything I'd written. I was sure I was going to go straight to the mirror when I got home, but luckily my other housemate Leanne and her boyfriend were home and that helped distract me. We grabbed a couple of beers and went down the park. Getting out of the house and away from the mirrors was exactly what I needed. By the time we got back home again, Kelvin was back from work and his sister and her boyfriend were there too. So we had a right houseful and it was a good laugh. The crisis was temporarily averted.
Saturday morning I felt okay-ish. I was thinking about doing my arm again just in case, but I didn't really want to do that unless I had to. I was slightly hungover/still a bit tiddly from Friday night. I went to the bathroom and thought, "I'll just look..." I could see the head coming up and that made me want to touch it and then whoops...
After sixteen days, it was enormously satisfying. And then I was like, "Damn." I got the hell out of the bathroom, quick.
So that's how I fell off the wagon. But as soon as I did, I thought, "The most important thing is that I don't use this one little slip-up as an excuse to massacre myself. It's absolutely crucial that I don't do that." That's why I backed off so fast. From that moment until bedtime it was more important than ever that I be strong, in the face of the fact that I wasn't going to get a sticker that night whatever I did. It would be so easy to decide that no sticker = doesn't matter. But it would matter. It would drag me down from reasonably pretty (finally!) to scabbed-up mess. And that would have a more damaging effect on my continued resolve than any number of missed stickers.
...So that's how I got back on the wagon :)
Peach
xxx
clever girl, way to go; three stickers in a row
Friday was a bit of a stressful day. I was near the end of a really long blogpost, and suddenly the page refreshed for apparently no reason and I lost everything I'd written. I was sure I was going to go straight to the mirror when I got home, but luckily my other housemate Leanne and her boyfriend were home and that helped distract me. We grabbed a couple of beers and went down the park. Getting out of the house and away from the mirrors was exactly what I needed. By the time we got back home again, Kelvin was back from work and his sister and her boyfriend were there too. So we had a right houseful and it was a good laugh. The crisis was temporarily averted.
Saturday morning I felt okay-ish. I was thinking about doing my arm again just in case, but I didn't really want to do that unless I had to. I was slightly hungover/still a bit tiddly from Friday night. I went to the bathroom and thought, "I'll just look..." I could see the head coming up and that made me want to touch it and then whoops...
After sixteen days, it was enormously satisfying. And then I was like, "Damn." I got the hell out of the bathroom, quick.
So that's how I fell off the wagon. But as soon as I did, I thought, "The most important thing is that I don't use this one little slip-up as an excuse to massacre myself. It's absolutely crucial that I don't do that." That's why I backed off so fast. From that moment until bedtime it was more important than ever that I be strong, in the face of the fact that I wasn't going to get a sticker that night whatever I did. It would be so easy to decide that no sticker = doesn't matter. But it would matter. It would drag me down from reasonably pretty (finally!) to scabbed-up mess. And that would have a more damaging effect on my continued resolve than any number of missed stickers.
...So that's how I got back on the wagon :)
Peach
xxx
clever girl, way to go; three stickers in a row
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Being Flea
[Content Warning added 20Jan2014 for use of ableist slurs.]
I've just had a bit of a mental epiphany, after reading this in a post by Angelina on the StopPickingOnMe! forum:
I'm 24 and I've been battling this curse since I was 2! Yes, two years old. I've noticed many people (even the textbooks agree) begin with this disorder in adolescents or teen years, but I'm the oddball. From the time I was learning my first words I was also tearing myself apart-literally. I would pick at sores or mosquito bites, or obsessively scratch at my legs and always claim to be "itchy".
http://www.stoppickingonme.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=43989#43989
It was so familiar, I had to check the name of the poster to make sure it wasn't something that I had posted whilst too hideously drunk to remember, lol. It reminded be of being Flea.
When I was five-and-a-half, my dad was given a kitten for his birthday. The kitten caught fleas, real bad. We had to have the whole house treated. I had flea-bites all up my legs, and they itched like crazy. I was already scratching my face by that point, but it wasn't a proper mess like it got to be in my teen years - I usually only had one or two marks, and sometimes I was completely clear. You could still see my freckles back then.
These bites on my legs drove me nuts. I scratched them til they bled but they still itched, so I scratched them more. I was literally clawing chunks of flesh out of my calves and shins. It didn't occur to me to care how it looked; I was a completely unselfconscious child. It was summer, so I wore my school dress down to my knees and knee-high white little-girl socks. I would put my hands down my socks and scratch until blood blossomed on the cotton like red roses. Then, when the scabs formed in the cotton of the sock, I would pull my socks down so the scabs tore off. They would bleed like crazy, trickling down my legs into the tops of my socks.
Totally unselfconscious. I ran around in the playground and at the park with my socks bunched round my ankles, the whole mess on display. I wasn't even thinking about it. I was too busy playing at being Indiana Jones.
I was playing in the park on my own one day, when a small cluster of girls who were a year or two older than me came over. They asked me what was wrong with my legs.
I was so young and so naíve. It didn't occur to me to lie.
"Flea bites," I replied.
I have always regarded that day as the starting-point of my school career as a social retard. I was known as 'Flea' from that day onward until I left that school when I was nine (we moved house, for unrelated reasons). Kids would run up to me in the playground, jab me, then run off and jab someone else, shouting "Flea germs, flea germs!" It was a game that never seemed to get old. I guess that after that, after we moved away, I had just been an outcast and a weirdo for too long to work out how to fit in. It wasn't fleas after that, but it was always something else.
Back when it all kicked off, I don't think I connected the social problem with the scratching problem. As far as I was concerned, I got picked on because I was unlucky enough to get flea bites. Later, I would add the reason that it was because I had been too stupid to make something up when they asked me about it. I should have lied. I don't think it ever occured to me - right up until writing this now! - that nobody would have noticed the bites if I hadn't scratched them.
My god! How the f*$& could I have gone seventeen years without realising that!?
Talk about your epiphanies... I guess that sort of makes the social retardation thing my fault in a way... dtM was actually responsible for making my childhood/teen social existence a total hell, and I never realised til now...
It all started with those damn bites.
Peach
xxx
clever girl, way to go; fourteen stickers in a row
I've just had a bit of a mental epiphany, after reading this in a post by Angelina on the StopPickingOnMe! forum:
I'm 24 and I've been battling this curse since I was 2! Yes, two years old. I've noticed many people (even the textbooks agree) begin with this disorder in adolescents or teen years, but I'm the oddball. From the time I was learning my first words I was also tearing myself apart-literally. I would pick at sores or mosquito bites, or obsessively scratch at my legs and always claim to be "itchy".
http://www.stoppickingonme.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=43989#43989
It was so familiar, I had to check the name of the poster to make sure it wasn't something that I had posted whilst too hideously drunk to remember, lol. It reminded be of being Flea.
When I was five-and-a-half, my dad was given a kitten for his birthday. The kitten caught fleas, real bad. We had to have the whole house treated. I had flea-bites all up my legs, and they itched like crazy. I was already scratching my face by that point, but it wasn't a proper mess like it got to be in my teen years - I usually only had one or two marks, and sometimes I was completely clear. You could still see my freckles back then.
These bites on my legs drove me nuts. I scratched them til they bled but they still itched, so I scratched them more. I was literally clawing chunks of flesh out of my calves and shins. It didn't occur to me to care how it looked; I was a completely unselfconscious child. It was summer, so I wore my school dress down to my knees and knee-high white little-girl socks. I would put my hands down my socks and scratch until blood blossomed on the cotton like red roses. Then, when the scabs formed in the cotton of the sock, I would pull my socks down so the scabs tore off. They would bleed like crazy, trickling down my legs into the tops of my socks.
Totally unselfconscious. I ran around in the playground and at the park with my socks bunched round my ankles, the whole mess on display. I wasn't even thinking about it. I was too busy playing at being Indiana Jones.
I was playing in the park on my own one day, when a small cluster of girls who were a year or two older than me came over. They asked me what was wrong with my legs.
I was so young and so naíve. It didn't occur to me to lie.
"Flea bites," I replied.
I have always regarded that day as the starting-point of my school career as a social retard. I was known as 'Flea' from that day onward until I left that school when I was nine (we moved house, for unrelated reasons). Kids would run up to me in the playground, jab me, then run off and jab someone else, shouting "Flea germs, flea germs!" It was a game that never seemed to get old. I guess that after that, after we moved away, I had just been an outcast and a weirdo for too long to work out how to fit in. It wasn't fleas after that, but it was always something else.
Back when it all kicked off, I don't think I connected the social problem with the scratching problem. As far as I was concerned, I got picked on because I was unlucky enough to get flea bites. Later, I would add the reason that it was because I had been too stupid to make something up when they asked me about it. I should have lied. I don't think it ever occured to me - right up until writing this now! - that nobody would have noticed the bites if I hadn't scratched them.
My god! How the f*$& could I have gone seventeen years without realising that!?
Talk about your epiphanies... I guess that sort of makes the social retardation thing my fault in a way... dtM was actually responsible for making my childhood/teen social existence a total hell, and I never realised til now...
It all started with those damn bites.
Peach
xxx
clever girl, way to go; fourteen stickers in a row
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Self Image, one hundred and eighty degrees
An interesting thing has happened. I have remembered that I don’t much care how I look.
I have never really cared about my appearance. As a kid, I was far too busy having fun to worry what I looked like. I never had any Nike trainers or Reebok joggers like the kids from trendy families, and whenever I brought it up my parents would go off on one about scandalous wastes of money. I was told so often that other people’s opinions didn’t matter (but catch me trying to leave the house without brushing my hair – “Get back in here! What will everyone think!?”).
Irony aside, it’s a philosophy I’ve always grown up with. “It doesn’t matter what others think of you, and it’s what’s on the inside that counts.” A lot of people scorn that as a load of Little House on the Prairie bullcrap. I really took it to heart.
So, unlike most dtManiacs it seems, I have never bothered to put on make-up every morning. It seems like a waste of time and effort to me. I’ll sometimes paint myself up a bit if I’m going out somewhere of an evening, if I feel like it. But there’s no way I could be bothered with it every morning. If other people have a problem with how I look au naturel, that’s their problem, not mine.
So it was only lately, when I started facing the fact that I had a problem that had spun way out of control, that I started obsessing over my looks. I found myself staring at girls on the bus who wore the latest clothes and perfect make-up and had immaculate hairstyles, and thought about getting my hair cut like theirs with that long floppy fringe, and buying some new clothes and make-up. I wanted to look like them. It was an absurd ambition. The floppy fringe in my eyes and face would have irritated me to screaming point, not to mention the tickling of hair on my cheeks making touch-freedom impossible. And frankly, at the moment I just plain can’t afford to spend that much money on clothing and cosmetics if I want to keep making my rent each month.
Logic had left the building. I just desperately, desperately wanted to feel attractive.
I don’t feel like that anymore.
My skin is clearing up. I have some spots, sure, but I think they may be because ‘that time of the month’ is coming up. I don’t know for sure if that’s the cause, because before now my skin has always been too much of a mess all month round for me to tell how my cycle affects it. I have been pretty spotty this last week, but now the last couple are going down and there aren’t any more coming up to replace them yet. My skin is reasonably clear for the first time since forever. With all the scabs out of the way, finally I can see the scarring I’ve given myself. I don’t have any deep pits or prominent marks, but my whole face is slightly mottled with pink all over. I’m hoping that will fade over time. But the main thing is – I don’t feel ugly anymore. I’m comfortable with my appearance, and I’ve stopped feeling desperate to be beautiful. Beauty be damned. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Peach
xxx
clever girl, way to go; thirteen stickers in a row
I have never really cared about my appearance. As a kid, I was far too busy having fun to worry what I looked like. I never had any Nike trainers or Reebok joggers like the kids from trendy families, and whenever I brought it up my parents would go off on one about scandalous wastes of money. I was told so often that other people’s opinions didn’t matter (but catch me trying to leave the house without brushing my hair – “Get back in here! What will everyone think!?”).
Irony aside, it’s a philosophy I’ve always grown up with. “It doesn’t matter what others think of you, and it’s what’s on the inside that counts.” A lot of people scorn that as a load of Little House on the Prairie bullcrap. I really took it to heart.
So, unlike most dtManiacs it seems, I have never bothered to put on make-up every morning. It seems like a waste of time and effort to me. I’ll sometimes paint myself up a bit if I’m going out somewhere of an evening, if I feel like it. But there’s no way I could be bothered with it every morning. If other people have a problem with how I look au naturel, that’s their problem, not mine.
So it was only lately, when I started facing the fact that I had a problem that had spun way out of control, that I started obsessing over my looks. I found myself staring at girls on the bus who wore the latest clothes and perfect make-up and had immaculate hairstyles, and thought about getting my hair cut like theirs with that long floppy fringe, and buying some new clothes and make-up. I wanted to look like them. It was an absurd ambition. The floppy fringe in my eyes and face would have irritated me to screaming point, not to mention the tickling of hair on my cheeks making touch-freedom impossible. And frankly, at the moment I just plain can’t afford to spend that much money on clothing and cosmetics if I want to keep making my rent each month.
Logic had left the building. I just desperately, desperately wanted to feel attractive.
I don’t feel like that anymore.
My skin is clearing up. I have some spots, sure, but I think they may be because ‘that time of the month’ is coming up. I don’t know for sure if that’s the cause, because before now my skin has always been too much of a mess all month round for me to tell how my cycle affects it. I have been pretty spotty this last week, but now the last couple are going down and there aren’t any more coming up to replace them yet. My skin is reasonably clear for the first time since forever. With all the scabs out of the way, finally I can see the scarring I’ve given myself. I don’t have any deep pits or prominent marks, but my whole face is slightly mottled with pink all over. I’m hoping that will fade over time. But the main thing is – I don’t feel ugly anymore. I’m comfortable with my appearance, and I’ve stopped feeling desperate to be beautiful. Beauty be damned. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Peach
xxx
clever girl, way to go; thirteen stickers in a row
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