After the cabaret

Do you need to rub a magic lamp to get in?

And the winds just howls.

There’s a chill in the air.  A frisson, a frenzy.  A tension that creeps up through your muscles until you are poised to strike at nothing there.  And the wind just howls.  There’s a drop of rain on my window.  Another, then another, like arrhythmic drums, until they blur into the white noise of a car radio between towns, between lives.  And still the wind just howls.  There’s an emptiness on the street.  Everyone retreated to safety, to warmth and comfort and psychological fortress of a locked door and curtains closed.  And the wind just keeps howling.  There’s a glint in my eye.  I worry about windows not quite closed, about a house just old enough to be a question.  I feel a feral anticipation towards the crashing and the clashing and the raucous joy of the elements.  And the wind howls and howls and howls.

Trichotillomania

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 :

NHS choices

UK-based support and information group

US-based support and information group

Sunset in amber

This light is like honey.

     I'm lying on the 10 year old bed, the covers that I've never seen different, but each year smell of the same faint washing powder.  I remember these curtains too.  I drew them once, tried to capture their dear twee honeysuckle pattern.  Felt-tip and black marker was too harsh a representation of these twirling fragile flowers.

     Through the net curtain, the stones of the wall and the bark of the tree are gilded in the same leaf against the sapphire of the evening sky.  A wry smile darts across my lips at the thought of a falling down stack of dry stone and an old man tree made precious by turn of phrase and the setting sun.

     I take out my headphones.  Listen.

     I can hear a lazy dusk chorus getting into swing.  Nature, the cruel gentle mother, knows it’s soon time for dark.

     I've written about this enough times before.  My favourite time of day.  Everything old, everything new.  Day to night, light to dark, when the familiar forms and shapes around are made scary and wild, dynamic and thrilling.  I want to go outside, feel the warmth on my skin and the chills down my spine, that inexplicable anticipation at the day’s turn. 

     But I don’t.  I stay inside like a good girl, secure, with my senses dulled by these four walls around me.  Why?

     I don’t truly know.  It’s not for lack of a companion – this time is best alone, or with that rare good friend who knows not to talk.  I think maybe I've grown complacent.  In a world where the greatest wonders are seen on screen, I have grown content to be a passenger, just another member of a captive audience, rather than risk playing a part.

      So I gaze out the window, and wish that this amber light could keep me trapped just a little while longer.

There is awesome in the world...

Jellyfish that can live forever?  This seems pretty damn excellent!