Enter Caleb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eh?” He looked confused.

“You mean, hair pulling?” I clarified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angry

And now about Tom.

Sweet, cute, wonderful Tom.

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

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

Bored now, sweetheart.

stopped counting stickers

WARNING, Bear with Sore Head

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Urgh.

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

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

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

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

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

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