Run your
fingers through your hair, searching for the right spot.
It might be
where there’s a patch of odd skin, an itch.
It might be
where there’s a thinning of the hair.
It might be
where you’ve done this before.
When you
find the right spot, you’ll know.
Work your
fingers around it. Get to know it, the
feel of it under the tips of your fingers.
Close the
tip of your forefinger and thumb around the base of the hairs. Compress – not so hard that you’ll pull them
all out, mind. You’ve got to find the right
hair.
Move your
fingers gently away from the root. You
know what you’re looking for; you’ve done this a thousand times before. A thousand times that shouldn’t have
happened, a thousand times that will happen again.
Really feel
the texture of your hair.
Some strands
thick, some strands thin.
Some strands
smooth, some oddly rough.
You’re
looking for the one that stands out amongst all of the straight, normal
hairs. The one with the tight, strong,
rebellious 2mm wave to it.
Is that one?
Your grip
tightens
you pluck it
from the root with a deftness that comes with practise.
You look at
your catch. Not this time. These are all normal, straight. You feel a pang of regret that you pulled
them when there was no need, but that thought is quickly overtaken by the compulsion
to find and remove what you think you just felt. The hair that you just pulled won’t have been
lost in vain.
Maybe five
more times, maybe ten, you pull out perfectly normal hair. You lose count because now you’re in the
zone, in a kind of obsessive trance as you seek that one hair, that for no
logical reason to you now needs to be pulled.
Sometimes
you give up. Move on to a different
spot, or get on with whatever it is you’re meant to be doing.
Most of the
time though, you don’t. You will finish what you have started.
Eventually,
you get the right hair. Sometimes it
feels the same as the rest as it comes out, sometimes it has a certain pain, a
particular discomfort, and yet with it a feeling of victory that you’ve done
it, you got it!
Researching
in a fit of self-centred navel-gazing you learn that each hair that gets pulled
causes the brain to release a small dose of dopamine, in theory to help you
cope with the pain. In practise, it
leads to a sort of addiction, an addiction to slow, sure but steady
self-mutilation. Your hair used to be
thick, straight, full, shiny and strong.
Now it’s thin, brittle, irregular, prone to breaking. You notice that you can track stressful
events by strange layers that develop in your hair. You can no longer grow it to be long and
flowing as was your pride and joy when you were young and carefree. Instead, you chop it short, to minimise the
visibility of the damage.
Your reading
also turns up a piece of horrible beautiful irony. The small-waved, dark, stray hairs that you
focus in on? They’re characteristic of
the regrowth that occurs following plucking.
Self-obsession driving self-mutilation driving self-mutilation.
And yet
still, you continue.
This is a recognised condition, that only becomes a problem for me when I'm stressed. Like when, y'know, you have exams in just over a week. If you want to find out more, these are a couple of useful websites :
