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

In your arms

In your arms I am safe.

In your arms I am warm.

In your arms I am the only one.

In your arms we are together.

In your arms I am a king.

In your arms I am a queen.

In your arms I am a joker.

In your arms I am everything in between.

In your arms I am lovely.

In your arms I am cruel.

In your arms there is the comfort of the well-known.

In your arms there is the excitement of something new.

In your arms I am yours.

In your arms you are mine.

COME BACK GUYS!

The dark is deeper, the cold more final, and the wind on the roof is louder when you're alone in the house.

Come back soon, I miss you.



I couldn't sleep last night with all the words in my head, so even though I'm technically on a sort of hiatus, I'll share last night's ramblings with you.  Also, if any of you are on Google Plus, there's now a button on my profile that lets you follow me.  I think.  I'm still not so good with all of this technology hubbub.

Time-travelling Tuesday

A few more monsters from old notebooks...

 

The Worst in the World.

     I don’t think I ever told you what it meant, the eyes across the half-lit room.  Not what you thought, not what I let it mean.  For I am the worst in the world.

     Names exchanged and trust hard-won, and a joy in madness’ grasp.  You pinned me down, held me up, taught me the art of a bewildered smile. This must be what it is, this must be what fables tell of, and “forever” was fleetingly there.  But somehow, no matter what expertise you employed, I remained stoic, in control of what I was.  You were not what I needed to fly free.  For I am the worst in the world.

     Plans were made, and new bonds formed.  I was in a new state with you, revolving in your spheres and tethered to your orbit.  I forgot what I wanted and I focused on what you needed and that seemed to be a bright, brilliant purpose.  But once someone else cast a shadow over the house I had built, I saw the cracks in the funhouse mirror, the flickering of the lightbulb, and I realised with a crash and a stab and an oh god no that I wasn’t actually as happy as I had assumed myself to be.

So I spoke the words.

Silence.

One breath, two.

And then you cried.

I had bought a giant to his knees.

For I am the worst in the world.

Want.

I just remembered that this exists...and now I want a  fancy loopy thingummy (and someone to operate while I play)  so that I can play Joanna Newsom covers on my viola too...   

(On which note, I also just found out that Newsom and Andy Samberg are a thing...mind = blown. In a good way)

Curse you procrastination!

Time-Travelling Thursday

So, I thought I might share some of the things that I've produced over the years, since I'm pretty busy at the moment and whatever inspiration I'm having isn't being given much time to grow.  I've done a lot of doodles in various notebooks, many of a kind of imagined grotesque, many of an interpretation of real animals/people.  

Here are some that I scanned in the other day.   I was about 14 or 15 when I drew them.