Tuesday 25 August 2009

A Couple of Days of Nothingness

Yesterday I wrote little if anything. Today will be the same. Tomorrow may be the same too. Sorry about that. I will have a lot to tell you about, Dear Blog, in a couple of days - until then, things to do, people to see.

Sunday 23 August 2009

Where Was I?

Yesterday (All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away) I was busy. Locked in battle with the last dregs of my university work. Being, actually, rather good. 3 out of 4 stars - that's 3/4 of my day without succumbing to Trichotillomania. I see that as a breakthrough. I have done better before - but not for a long while, so I am proud of myself. Hurrah for me! (Not, of course, that I could ever be anything other than proud of myself, being, as I am, tremendously concieted.)

Today, however, has been a different matter already. I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I had done my work and been good and that it was time to indulge myself. When ice-cream (commanded but denied) did not materialise, I sank into a highly enjoyable snuggling into the blue cushion of self-pity. The world was wronging me, I told myself. I had worked damn hard and the world didn't give a damn. (This despite the world's protestations of quite the opposite.) I had only asked for ice-cream. Fine then. I would be naughty. And I was. For all the good it did me.

Friday 21 August 2009

Two Stars and Counting...

There are two stars-stickers on my purple piece of paper. What this means is that, for two blocks of 6 hours, I have refrained from pulling my hair out. Well done me. Unfortunately, as I have been under a lot of pressure (academic pressure, not the air kind...)recently, I have also stripped the hair from one entire side of my head. It hurts even when I do nothing to it. The scalp - poor suffering scalp - has been most severely mushed. When one pulls one's hair out, one often pulls little pods of almost-clear-white scalp out as well - these are the hair roots. And the scalp really could do with them or it tends to collapse just a little.
I am going to be being social (being social like 'Living Social'?) soon. This delights but slightly worries me, as I have a wig I'm not used to, the behaviour of which may be unpredictable. I do not want to repeat certain scenarios I have lived through - such as remove-ing the fallen-off, stepped-on thing from the high-heel of some's high-heel in a club... I must get to know it before its debut. Just to make sure.
Also, becuase I have had a lot to do, calling the number the NHS people gave me hasbeen pushed aside by other matters (such as my Degree). Call within 5 days, the letter tells me, ominously. The 5 days have passed. What now, I wonder? Damn the letters of the NHS to the pathologically anxious. Fools. Damned fools. Those lastcouple of words sum up my emotional state at the moment. An emotional state in which almost everyone is a damned fool. This is becuase I have to much essay-writing ahead of me and too little available time ahead of me. This too will pass.

Thursday 20 August 2009

Seeing Stars


Seeing Stars


Yes, the system of the stars in working. The purple paper on the door of my wardrobe has no stars on it yet - but it will have very soon... This afternoon I only pulled out one hair! One! And that almost-by-mistake as I as playing with my hair (what there is of it) as one does... The sheet of stickers is stuck to the door of my wardrobe as well. The more stars on the purple paper the more hair on my head - and the correlation between the two will be visable when I stand in front of the door of my wardrobe - on which is my mirror.


What I See When I Look In The Mirror


When I see at the moment when I look in the mirror (like the Guardian column...) is a damaged scalp. There was blood - my nails are sharp things and what feels so so good at the time really really hurts for a long while afterwards. They dig in - they pierce the skin - they become painted pale red with my blood... And then it heals and then it happens all over again. Hopefully the sticker chart will help with that. But I can't help but feel there will always be something. A hand dragged roughly across a rough wall as I walk beside it. Shards of burning peppercorns crunched and embedded ever so slighly in the flesh. But nothing so VISIBLE. The visible expressions of the darker side of the personality are, how shall one say, a difficult thing, like being paraded around a supermarket in suspenders or being pushed into a swimming-pool in drag. It is out of place and society doesn't like it.


I Wish


I do wish the NHS would get on with actually giving me CBT rather than sending me vague letters...

Wednesday 19 August 2009

A Hole in The Head

Yesterday, in a fit of wig-discontent, I bought a new one. Shorter this time so there will be no need to hack it. The old one, the very old one, the one I had worn for about half a year, was looking tired. I had pulled too much of its hair out. So, now - I look like a chestnut version of Myra Hindley. This does not bother me in the least. My darling ex-boyfriend avers that I look like the Queen in her younger days. I am rather pleased with the overall effect with my black sequined hairband nuzzle-ing over my chestnut waves - even if I do say so myself.

I also pusuaded my mother to buy some pretty pretty star stickers - in order to record any days during which I a good girl.

That evening I pulled my hair out - of course I did, I have an awful lot of university work to do and my love-life/love-death is a delighful and undelightful farce. Moliere could have done a lot with it. These things/non-things conspire to increase the generally panic-stricken nature of my personality. So there is now a displeasing gap in the natural, scarce, dark-gold-coloured hair on one side of my head. Oh dear oh dear.

Today? I only woke a few hours ago. But I have been good. I think it is perhaps a matter of enviroment. When I live with my ex-boyfriends - let's just say, much as I like him, his enviroment is notideal for me. Here at my mother's it is quiet. I have my own room. I have peace and solitude and the importance of those cannot be overestimated.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Just A Thought

I want to let my hair down - but I don't have any. LOL (BITTERLOL).

How Am I?

I sit on a tortured fake-leather-crinkled-sofa-of-beauty and I breathe in and out and in and out with vast rapidity. Becuase I am hyperventilating. I do that sometimes after midnight, like a strange and unpleasnt sort of mint (the hyperventilating, not me...). And the deconstruction of my very self is comforting. The tearing sound of the suction of the tentacle-like end of a hair suckering out of my scalp. It is all very much in keeping with my rather flesh-related dreams of late - a cigarette peeling back its brown paper to reveal flesh-beneath-skin, muscle and red and the glistening nature of the uncovered. And then the pain, first a periphery-issue, becomes a punishment for my lack of control, and cartwheels into ever increasing circles of crossness at myself and self-inflicted pain beyond the bounds of the pleasant. From just above my forehead, the hairs like little golden threads with sharp edges, cutting through my scalp as I pull. And the alarming thing is that this image appeals to me. In a way quite unlike the way I would react to the idea of, say, stubbing my toe. Which would be horrible. There is something very different about a dull pain such as that and the sharp pain of pulling my hair out - something I occassionally attempt to convince myself that I can control. The fact is, though, that I cannot control it. That even thinking about it makes my heart thud and thump and scream in a heartlike fashion - becuase I am seemingly helplessly a victim to my own hands, which now like the hypocrites they are type this about their own treachery. The point they might make if they had brains is this: the brain and not the hands dictate the hands. But what part of my brain can possibly dictate one thing while another part exclaims (silently) 'no no no no'? This reminds me of the Nietzschean idea of warring wills (yes, I know Nietzsche did not think of it first - but I know it from him). At the moment the wrong will is winning: The Will to Self-Destruction. What needs to win is The Will To Power (Over Myself). I think perhaps that was what Nietzsche was suggesting anyway: self-control. And why I have been so attracted to his philosophy. The philosophy of The Strong-Minded and The Brave. Becuase I feel that I am Weak-Minded and Cowardly, and thus need to redress the balance. Not a very delightful self-analysis, but I always was absurdly hard on myself (this achieving nothing except occassionaly fits of tears as I give way beneath the pressure of my own self-consciousness). And this is how I feel tonight. Overwhelmed and alone. This despite the fact that I am actually in the same room as another person. This other person is not a trichotillomaniac and exclaims, helplessly, 'What can I do?' when I exclaim about my hyperventilation and suchlike. All very well-meaning and unhelpful. I know I know - the only person who can help me is me. But sometimes I rather to wish that I could simply collapse in tears and wait for someone else, someone stronger and more sensible than I am, to save me. Who doesn't feel like that sometimes. The point is - when finding oneself in these situations, one must must must find the rescources somewhere to become one's own parent, friend, lover, etc etc. One simply must. Or one goes under. Which wouldn't do at all.

Monday 17 August 2009

Tweezers

Tweezers - what can one say. Melt them down.

Sunday 16 August 2009

A Little SCRABBLE (trade mark) is a Terrible Thing...

As one does of an evening I pulled the green travelscrabble set out of the felty green bag I had flung it into - and insisted on a game. Hours upon hours later I had not only lost (by 2 darned points) but I had pulled quite a lot of my hair out. I am very serious about the game. I like to win. If there is any indication that I am not going to win then my life becomes unbearable until the darn thing is over with. I really should have put something on my head. A turban-like towel. Or a hat. Or something. But one never does think in advance that one is going to succumb, does one? One does not. So - having slept and woken without the least possibility remaining of having a Good Hair Day, I am piqued. That is all. I am piqued and it I continue to write about the darn thing I will become yet more piqued. So it is better for me to eat home-made doughnuts and think, instead, about my figure. Yes, I will be neurotic about my figure today, and not about my hair. The moral of the story is clear: go to bed at a reasonable hour and do not become terribly attached to the idea of ALWAYS winning board games.

Saturday 15 August 2009

'It's Finally Happened (I'm Slightly Mad)'

This evening - no, this night - I have given into the Trichotillomania and pulled my hair out again - quite a lot of it and all. Why? Partly becuase of the bewildered stressfulness of looking up how to send an important essay to my university - without quite knowing how much it will weigh (how strange that word looks). Partly Becuase, wandering around Facebook, I found a discussion of the following question (or something along the lines of): 'Can Anyone Give Me One Good Reason Why Gays Should Have Rights?' The very reading of said pseudo-question was enough to jar with my idea of a pleasant evening. I did not dare join said pseudo-debate. I simply did not dare. 'Can Anyone Tell Me One Logical Reason Why People Who Hate People Should Not Themselves Be Hated By Those They Hate?' Hate hate hate. Not a good train of thought. But how to escape from it? Without tearing something or someone up into little pieces? So, of course, she tore her hair... How Biblical. Also sheer fatigue. So: On Day Three Of The Blog She Fell From Grace. You will see more of this. More of this failure. Becuase having Trichotillomania is to experience failure after failure after failure. However - look at James Bond. Would his wonderful triumph at the end of the movie be quite so vivid and victorious had he not, at some point or other, been held hostage by a chap with a big white cat? Only connect.

Friday 14 August 2009

Capsules, Creation, Hacksaws, Destruction...

There are days when I hardly engage in the ordinary rites of Trichotillomania at all. This has been one of them. Perhaps becuase the condition, which I think of, almost, as a personified enemy, think that if it keeps its head down for a while I'll give up on the blog - which, think again arch-enemy dearest, I won't. Or that I will pull my hair out just to demonstrate that I actually do have the condition and am not getting in a public and literary flap about nothing - which, think again arch enemy dearest, I won't.

Capsules

There are - as you may know - many capsules and pills and elixers out there for Trichotillomaniacs. The problem is, Trichotillomania is a behavioural condition. There is no chemical imbalance to be put right, balanced, with a chemical intervention. For this reason a behavoural intervention, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, is often prescribed. Horrid horrid sterile-sounding amateur-medical-blab. Today I attempted to buy some cod-liver-oil-capsules. Becuase the cod-liver-oil I buy in bottles tastes thoroughly hideous and I never take it and it goes off and I throw it away and I feel guilty for wasting it. So. I scamper into BOOTS and stare at shelves upon shelves of cod-liver-oil-related things. COD LIVER OIL WITH MULTIVITAMINS. VANILLA FLAVOUR COD LIVER OIL. COD LIVER OIL WITH ORANGE JUICE. COD LIVER OIL SO CHEAP AND WEAK YOU MIGHT AS WELL JUST GET SOME BATTERED COD. COD LIVER OIL SO EXPENSIVE YOU MIGHT AS WELL HIRE SOMEONE TO FARM THE THINGS FOR YOU. You get the idea. A cod-graveyard gleaming in all the oil of a muscle-man-contest - lovely. There is even, for those who pity the sharp-toothed cod (see my collected poetry), VEGETARIAN COD LIVER OIL - however that works. So I stand in front of the shelves and stared helplessly at the lot of them. I turned to my shopping-companion and, in a little a mouse-like voice, said 'What should I do?' Of course their guess was a good as mine, so, magpie that I am, I pounced (oh the mixed meaphors) on the prettiest packet and hoped I could reclaim the expenses from my mother under the heading of Medical Supplies. Becuase this COD LIVER OIL, WITH MULTVITAMINS, VANILLA FLAVOUR or WITH ORANGE JUICE does not come cheap. Except of course when it comes so cheap that is is obvious that is is going to be completely useless. I chose EQUAZEN eye q (trade mark) capsules. Becuase the box was silver. I'm not sure what that says about my capabilities of reasoning pre-cod-liver-oil... Part of my mind screams mouthlessly THIS IS A SCAM! COD LIVER OIL AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS YOU ARE TAKING WILL NOT HELP YOU! STRENGTH OF WILL WILL HELP YOU! AND YOU HAVE NO STRENGTH OF WILL! The only reasonable answer to which is to cry. But I really do think that the better my brain is functioning the better my moment-to-moment decision-making-capabilities are likely to be. "ALL THE OTHER THINGS" - yes, well... My growing slavery to the little round and oblong tablets and capsules I do so hope will miraculously save me... At present I am taking 16 a day. 1 multivitamin tablet - without which, I have been brought up to believe - I am likely to drop dead at any moment. So far so sensible. 1 echinacea tablet - without which I am the constant prey of snuffles and sniffles - so far so sensible also. 1 Saint John's Wort (Hypericin) capsule - as a decreaser of mild poet-melancholia - which, I have observed, exacerbates my Trichotillomania - i.e. when despairing over a half-finished Archaic And Complex Poem Of Many Stanzas and a glass of something mind-racing in a night of great blackness as though it would suck one's soul... That sort of thing. 2 little green tablets of Ginkgo Biloba - the taste of which I will not describe to you - the goal of which is nothing to do with Trichotillomania, rather it is my intention to quicken my synaptic firings to such an extent that my thought zooms like a Grecian God with foot-wings rather then throwing itself onto its back like a sluggish cat... 4 capsules of NAC (N-ACETYL CYSTEINE - 'N-Acetyl Cysteine is a natural sulphur containing amino acids derivative and antioxidant') - that's 1,400mg (!) i.e. rather a lot - on the informal suggestion of my very good doctor. Studies seem to show that NAC is helpful - though I have not yet sufficiently researched it to work out how. Anyway, anything once and all that... 1 Vitamin C tablet beacuse - well, they were there and available to be taken and why waste them (yes that really is my attitude towards these things) and becuase it seems that NAC may deplete vitamin C. And, last but not least, 6 Cod Liver Oil Capsules - that's over 1,000mg of EPA. If I don't get better taking all this then I think it can safely be said that chemical interventions are the the answer... Of course, it is always possible that this heady cocktail of major and minor supplements could put an end to me before it puts and end to the Trichotillomania. In that case I suppose I could at least say (or not say - I wouldn't be saying anything...) that I died trying. The non-Trichotillomania-related results of this regime seems thus far to be that my dreams are many and vivid, possibly becuase my brain is being supplemented beyond the bounds of everyday sanity. So far as the Trichotillomania is concerned, I seem to be succumbing to its rites less. But who is to know quite why. Any reason will do - I don't want reasons I want results. How oafish of me. By the way, it has just occured to me that I should point out that I consider the above combination of supplements possibly quite unwise, so DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS.

While I was out I walked past ZARA, place of wonderful trousers THAT ACTUALLY FIT ME WHILE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT MY NOT-INSUBSTANTIAL HIPS, and OH the wigs of the mannequins! What I wouldn't give! No picture becuase it didn't occur to me to take one at the time... Maybe some other time...

Hacksaws

The problem with wigs - yes yes there are many problems with wigs, but a major one if your will insist, dear internal-censor, in being so terribly terribly insistant on the proper uses of words)is that the texture of them, when slightly frizzed (as they tend to be after a while), is irresistible to tactile Trichotillomaniacal fingers. So, the wigs get unravelled. Fortunately, most wigs start life with far more hair than they really need. One puts on one's new wig and one peers out from under it like the Dulux dog. So it can cope with losing some hair. The problem is, after wearing the thing for six months (while attempting not to buy a new one becuase they are so darn expensive) a little becomes a lot and suddenly there is a patch of underlying fabric exposed. And the underlying fabric has some threads of cotton or whatever it is made of sticking up. And that gets pulled. And before one knows it the whole thing is in sorry tatters. So, when I found one of those cotton-threads today, I took my co-habitants hacksaw to it. There is never a pair of scissors around when one needs one (one one one this is getting somewhat confusing).

So here I sit drinking ultra-cheap cola from a purple goblet and thinking to myself: I contruct, I destruct, I construct, I destruct, I buy the capsules, I damage the wig, I buy the capsules, I damage the wig... And that is the nature of Trichotillomania. There are rhythms of the construction of oneself and the destruction of oneself - all by oneself. The one cancels out the other until one succumbs to stasis. But there must be a way out, so there must! That must be the battlecry.



Photograph - The 3rd Week of August 2009


This is me WITHOUT MY WIG (oh shock horror fainting). These pictures will I hope show my hair-amount fluctuations. And provide the general public with amusement and mirth.

Thursday 13 August 2009

The Purpose of This Blog...

My last blog was a thing of wonder and aimlessness... This was all very well, but I hardly felt that I was expending my time productively. So. This blog with be about Something Important. It will be about a condition which has been MY condition for something like a decade now. Trichotillomania - The Horrible Illness of DOOM. Otherwise known as an Impulse Control Disorder. And a Disorder it very definitely is - it disorders one's life and makes things rather difficult generally. Also, it is a vastly unfashionable illness. I would much rather have been cursed with something invisible. Something I could hide a little better. But no. The Gods decided to zap me with this particular jagged stream of electricity. Lighting up elements of the human condition (yes yes I will be using terms such as the human condition - get used to it) I would otherwise much rather not have seen. Becuase, as will become clear, I am really not a very appropriate person to have been martyred by such a thing... Which is perhaps why it has chosen me, swooped down on me, and stuck its claws in...

The Question of Public Pillory

Yes - I know I know. I am putting this up here and rather putting things out in the open that might best have been kept quiet - 'UNDERGROUND' (hear the boom boom clash of 'The War of The Worlds'...). But that is just the problem. No no no it should NOT with screaming capital letters be kept underground! And anyone who suggests it should should have a bucket of ice-cube-laced water thrown over their screaming head. Why is this? Becuase secrecy - all very well for diaries and assignations - can suggest guilt and strangeness and horror. What lives in the attic? The mad woman. Take the mad woman out of the attic and (unless she hacks you to death) she will not perhaps seem quite so mad. Indeed - perhaps she was mad BECUASE she was in the attic - how would you like being in an attic with all those creepy crawlies and suchlike?!? Part of the experiment I suppose will be what reaction, if any, this gets from those who were not in the know. I would rather judge the characters of those around me in relation to what they really think of me than in relation to some sham approval anyhow. I can survive the losing, if neccesary, of a few friends in order to retain my integrity. & I have thought about this properly. I think what is more important than a temporarily battered ego is that I make the point that - in some respects - I am not in the least ashamed of having had this condition. Only of my failure to overcome it.

So What Is My Position On The Victim/Failure/Neutral-Person Thing? How Do I See Myself In Relation To This?

I used to see myself as A VICTIM in capital letters. I used to sob into my pillow and lament my fate. But what teeneager is not doing that most of the time? Being excessively vain, I saw my condition as a sort of Ancient Grecian punishment for hubris. I saw myself as Antigone thrown into a cave of un-beauty. I drew beautiful pictures of un-beauty and suffering.

I used also to see myself as the cause of my condition. I thought that I must be terribly terribly wicked (the admonitions of adults ringing in my ears 'wicked child!' strange how one remembers these throwaway adult mini-tantrums) the neccesary cause of my own fate. That at least gave it a Satan-in-Hell-like dignity. Here we have been cast. Into the dark fire of hidden suffering. Becuase we are monstrous and it was neccesary that we be kept away from the world. (This of course to the rallied troops of fallen angels.)This with a terrible sense of responsibility for everyone - for the whole world - that was simply unfaceable. Again - what teenager does not feel this. This I have not entriely transcended.

As my understanding that what I had was a condition I attempted to absolve myself from responsibility. However - this could all too easily return to the Me-As-Victim thing, which, delicious as it is too lounge on sofas and sob into ice-cream designed to cheer oneself up and dream about how wonderfully productive and brilliant and witty and beautiful one might have been if only one had not been struck down with this dreadful disorder, is not particularly constructive.

What I Want To Gain From This Blog

An overview of myself as a Trichotillomaniac - as I ever so much want to understand myself in relation to the condition in order that I may crush the condition underfoot.

An overview of the reactions (if any) of other people to the condition - as a sort of sociological experiment.

A way of making my success or failure public with a view to shaming myself into success (strange string of words).

What My Readers May Gain From This Blog

A further insight into my fascinating life.

A heightened knowledge of Trichotillomania.

Amusement.