I Want Doesn't Get

Remember what one's relatives used to bleat at one? 'I want doesn't get.' 'I don't want doesn't get!' I would, slightly hysterically, explode at them - laughter bulleting into their well-meaning attempts to turn me into a nice little lady. Well - I WANT HAIR! Nice hair. Not I've-just-been-kidnapped-and-made-to-join-some-strange-and-super-Spartan-army hair. I want it all - I want it all - I want it all - and I want to now. Unfortunately - it isn't going to happen like that. Even if I were to be utterly utterly utterly good for weeks and weeks and weeks growing my hair back (to my satisfaction) would take a while. Fortunately - I have been very very very good. I have, today, only pulled my hair out a couple of times. That is EXTREMELY good so far as I am concerned. And thus I have recorded it. So that I can look back - when the year is up - on this blog - and say: Yes, I've been good sometimes. I don't want to record ONLY the worst of times. I don't want the blog to be one long wail. I am feeling quite positive about it all today. That is possibly because I have been in rather a good mood in general today. It is possibly because I have bought myself a new pair of (pink!) shoes - yes, I am that shallow. It is possibly because I am buoyed up on the bubble of half a bottle of good wine and a fair amount of whiskey. And nourished - nourished heartily - with steak and caramalised carrots and suchlike - by a chap who disinterestedly is happy to feed me simply because he loves me - hopelessly in a very literal sense - and because people fainting of hunger all over the place because they would rather buy shoes than food would be disconcerting for the world at large. My point is this - I am lucky and spoiled and talented and not-bad-looking. What in God's name have I got to mooch around about? So I shouldn't. It's not fair on me or anyone else. I'm going to damn well be brilliant, or damn well be damned, and my hair is a part of that. KEEP CALM & CARRY ON and all that jazz.

Calm Down

I had been quite good until this afternoon. By my rather appalling standards I have been quite good full stop. I have created a little space on the right side of my head - just above my right-hand-temple. The pain was - really quite enjoyable, actually. But this is what happens when I stay up when I'm deliciously tired. Today I had a lot of energy. I sang in the street. I crossed my eyes amongst serious people in cafes. I laughed at my own silliness. I laughingly smashed my going-into-town-and-buying-books partner in the torso and was thoroughly amazed when, though smiling, they seemed a little alarmed. An enjoyable day. So now I am all over-excited. I never could get used to bedtimes. And so I have become just a little overwrought. I am still happy - but I can feel my heart pounding (over-used term) in my chest (where else?) and I am trying to breathe in a reasonably decorous manner. Life life life I love you. And all that. But as soon as I start enjoying living you I start to panic just a little - becuase I unfreeze from my detatchedness-of-emotion just a little - and then life gets a little scary. As it does. A small price to pay I suppose. - if you only pull your hair out when you are actually alive, when is the alternative except death (?) so just go steady. Good food. Good books. Lemon cheesecake. Lemonade. All is good. Calm down you silly thing you! You're happy! Live with it.

Current Life Experinces = Somewhat Difficult. Current Trich-Related Experiences = Looking Up. Note the Paradox.

So... Despite being embroiled in utter war with my mother (the same of story - told louder, longer and more loathe-ing-ly, I am actually doing pretty well. For me. Yes - I am pulling my hair out. But not nearly so much. Possibly this is becuase I am away from home. (Is this fair? I pulled my hair out quite a lot while I was away from home while I was at university... But I was under the usual stresses of university life then, I suppose...) So hurrah for me! My fingernails are (as you can see in the picture) really quite long now. So long, in fact, that attempting to learn classical guitar (from a book, without a tutor, highly unlikely to work I know...)is becoming somewhat challengeing. My nails make horrible sounds in conjunction with the three metal strings. It is - HORRIBLE! But I think they look pretty. So never mind The Pursuit of Musical Brilliance. My hair looks (marginally) better, too. From the point of view of a non-Trichotillomaniac, it probably still looks pretty bad. But from my point of view it looks like the beginning, at least, of the much-vaunted Road to Recovery (wherever that may be - and, in my case, it may well be geographically-related).

New Post

OK - New Post. The last one was rubbish / completely the sort of thing I do when I'm trying to pretend that I'm not thoroughly RUBBISH for giving in to Trichotillomania. It isn't my fault I have it. But it is my fault if I just give in. I'm going to have to fight a little harder. No-one should have to feel the way that I feel. But the only way I'm going to stop feeling that way is to FIGHT it. Which requires effort. (Too much effort, more effort than I have...) This is absurd. This will probably come to nothing. But I have to make these statements to myself. That I will not stand for it any longer. And all that. Because if I don't what is left except slipping slowly down the slope of failure? I feel hideous. I am tired of feeling hideous. But there is always the paradox of wanting to tell myself off, to punish myself, so that I will not do it again. And knowing that I need to take care of myself to some extent or the self-destruction of Trichotillomania will turn into general self-destructiveness and then where will I be? Quite possibly nowhere. And, having written some more of the (endlessly being-written) novel today, I know that I need to exist - at least until the novel is finished. Perhaps that is why I leave it unfinished. It is, quite literally, my raison d'etre. I need to exist - in a reasonably intact manner - if I am to do anything useful. And, if I am neither to be beautiful or useful, what good am I to be? Another thing - I'm sure I'm getting fatter. To be both bald and fat is hardly a good look. (Note the note of self-hatred - to be avoided if at all possible.) The point is - I want to be the best I can be. And I'm not being the best I can be. And I am furious with myself. I should temper this furiousness with an understanding that I have an ILLNESS - that it is not my fault that I have an illness - and that all I can possibly do is try my very best. My therapist disagrees with this. The argument is that expecting my VERY best from myself all the time is expecting too much. I may not EXPECT my very best of myself all the time. But if I don't TRY my very best (and there is a distinction to be drawn) then I can't very well admire myself. To try and to fail is one thing. Not to try is - monstrous.

Therapy and Stuff

'Why don't you tell your therapist what you're REALLY like?!?' my mother shrieks, like an excessively gritty character in a kitchen sink drama. This implies, I suppose, that my therapist, if I told her what I am 'REALLY' like, would throw up her hands in horror and declare me beyond redemption. I consider the question with as much level-head-ed-ness as I can manage. (This is how I have always tried to stream my mother's outbursts into manageable channels.) What am I 'REALLY' like? I think to myself. It is possible for me to know what I am 'REALLY' like? This leads me to think about how only a transcendent God could be omniscient - the picture of God looking at circular time from the top of a mountain... A picture from a long-ago lecture at a long-ago college... Then a scuffle breaks out. And I leave.

Therapy becomes ever more demanding.I cling to the arms of the chair as though I could fling myself into the vertiginous abyss of the dark carpet. I give the therapist the information I think she wants and she examines it and clears it away. I feel like an actor in a transparent costume which I attempt to pull round myself, only for, like a nymph with a satyr, it to be pulled off. I stand on the stage and attempt to behave as though this tug-of-war is not occurring. My laughter sounds like bullets.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to become less war-like. I consider this a highly dangerous plan. I need to exist. The world needs me. I need to prevent the world from destroying me - for its own good as well as for mine. Destruction comes in many forms. I could be dissolved in the crowd. I could be subsumed. I could be altered, made less than I am, impoverished. (I am reminded here of my present "relationships" - of one dying friendship in particular. How foolish women are to cling to sinking ships! It s valiant of us, but it does us no good... We are drowned.) So what am I to do? Enact a farewell to arms and watch the other, non-farewell-to-arms people smile and stalk me through the invisible grass of post-modernity - smile with sharp, sharp teeth... For, as has been pointed out, I am a wounded animal.

The people around me - how I wish sometimes that there weren't ANY people around me! - are being ... unhelpful. He-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless is (or was) bombarding me with criticism. While I keep up a constant and futile refrain of 'Shut up! Shut up!' - to drown him out if nothing else. It has been - unbearable. So - I have fled. To my mother's. Where I have been received in a sort of condemnatory silence. What have I done? Answers on a postcard... Solitude = Happiness. Happiness = Solitude. I refuse to be made unhappy by other people. It is absurd. So - I will reacquaint myself with books. (Reacquaint myself with books? I read, don't I? Yes - but I used to read a great deal more than I do now.) Books are wonderful. Obvious, I know, but worth highlighting. They are always available. when one wants them to be. They will always go away when one wants them to. They do not enter into endless and futile arguments. They do not shout at one. (Note the barely suppressed note of really quite distasteful righteous indignation. Yes - I am piqued. But I refuse to be. I won' be. I will forsake mine enemies. I will, in the words of Walt Whitman, dismiss whatever offends my own soul.) Replacements are required. The Trichotillomania-related point is, as I attempted to point out to He-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless, that it is terribly terribly difficult for me to get well soon while I am being unremittingly buffeted by the spleen of the melodramatic. People don't recover brilliantly when surrounded by ill-wishers who openly wish them dead. However much I may try to transcend all this enmity, it would be a great deal easier for me if there were less enmity for me to transcend. The only possible way to bring this about seems to be escape. But that seems a little extreme. So I have been spending a lot of time in my darling room, my sanctum, and outside. But there is always the moment I have to go out - into the hallway, into the rest of the flat - or come in from outside - into ... what reminds me of those of illustrations of The Mouth of Hell. Cannons to the left of her. Cannons to the right of her. Volleyed and thundered. I cannot help but imagine myself with cannon-holes polka-dotting me. And for why? I'm not sure I care for why. I couldn't possibly have done anything sufficient. So I simply don't care.

Written 06/10/09

On Saturday I bought a new wig. There was nothing in particular wrong with the old one. But the old one was getting progressively more frizzed. From a distance, all was well, probably. But I knew it was frizzed, even if no-one else did. And that knowledge bothered me. It was all my own fault, of course. Me and my bohemian ways. Falling asleep in my wig. Indeed, falling asleep in my clothes. Falling asleep in my shoes. Me and my insomniacal (slightly less glamorous slightly most truthful) ways. So. My rather lovely ex-boyfriend offered to lend me the money for a new one. So I felt prettier. (Of course, I should have refused. But I didn't want to. So I didn't. If he wants to make me happy it would be hardly logical for me to refuse to be made happy, now, would it?) So off I went to the wig shop. And loitered at a bus stop pretending I was doing something to do with buses - looking across the road trying to work out if there was anything I liked the look of. Because it would be embarrassing to walk in, try on lots of things I didn't like, and walk out again. I don't even like doing that with clothes. Then I lost my nerve and fled into a Tesco Express. And bought some sparkle-ing mineral water. And sat outside the library and drank said mineral water - trying to calm down - and listening to an intrigue-ing conversation someone was having on their mobile telephone. Then I made a dash for the shop. The sheer volition of my rather fast manner of walking carrying me in. I wandered round, trying to remain calm. (Yes - I have done this before. But it is such an important thing to choose, really, isn't it? What if I were to make the wrong choice? It has been known... Mostly, it has to be said, when I was younger and less experienced at choose-ing the things.) First I tried on a human hair wig. A strange experience. It was terribly, terribly soft. I felt almost a reverence touching it. Like stroke-ing the hair of a complete stranger. Very very odd. It looked beautiful on me. It was, however, £110. More than half of my money - more than half of ALL my money. I could have bought it. I probably should have bought it. I've paid more for wigs before. But somehow I couldn't bear the thought of now being able to do ANYTHING for two whole weeks. Until, that is, the government paid me another £100 for being ... for being a Trichotillomaniac and for not having yet failed the medical test they want to give me. The thought of which terrifies me. Anyway. I didn't buy the beautiful and expensive wig. And, as I silently made the decision not to, I felt like crying. Which would have been very embarrassing indeed. I hate embarrassment. It is pointless and ... do I balk at saying vulgar? - probably not. The next one I tried, less expensive, was very very dark and rather too much in an aesthetic sense. It made me look like some niche-market bondage pin-up. Which is all very well if one is a niche-market bondage pin-up... "...but then again incidentally if you're so inclined..." ('QUEEN) The third I liked. The third the woman behind the counter liked. The third I bought. The third I am happy with. It has that new-wig-scent I have grown to love. New new new! And the glossy-ness. No doubt the glossy-ness will last only as long as I do nothing strenuous in it. A few Pilates classes, a few walks along a windswept beach, a few bohemian-fallings-asleep in everything I am wearing - and - disaster! Until then I am very very pleased. This one, I declared this evening, as I swept into my mother's sitting-room, wearing borrowed/stolen jeans and borrowed/stolen pink socks, makes me look like someone who used to be an actress. A little cynical. A little old. But - I was beautiful ONCE, dharlink! *looks forward to growing old disgrace-fully in a gin-soaked fashion* So how am I doing with the not-pulling-my-hair-out thing? Not very well. I have moved round to the back of my neck, where it is currently most painful. Perhaps it is most painful because it has been most left-alone. The point is, this distracts me, in my more overwrought moments, from digging my nails into my skin, hitting myself round the face (round the face? does that make sense?) and flinging myself onto soft furnishings sobbing violently. And exclaiming 'I hate my life!' And laughing at my own ridiculousness. And further exclaiming (for this almost always happens at night when I can't sleep and am utterly exhausted) 'I can't sleep! If only I could sleep! I'm trying so hard to sleep! OH why can't I sleep!' Etc. Occasionally accompanied by a little scream of anger. I have decided, since the above behavior is most unacceptable, that I will fine myself, next month, if I have not to some very substantial extent stopped doing the above. I will fine myself the cost of a human hair wig. So that the punishment may fit the crime. I would much rather do other things with £110. But if I really can't control myself by sheer will-power (& CBT) and all that - I will just have to punish myself. It sounds absurd. Of course Trichotillomaniacs should not be punished for the illness they have. I'm really quite ashamed of having written that. But that's how I feel in relation to myself. The rather childish hope that, if I'm a good girl, everything will be alright. *actually realizes that a tear is running down her face - an unusual show of emotion about a subject I am so used to - at least outside of the aforementioned fits of hysterics (which are just as much to do with not being able to sleep, I think, as about Trichotillomania - though of course when I am feeling tired I therefore feel rubbish therefore I also feel worse about the Trichotillomania). The horrible thing is, to elicit pity (and in the depths of a fit of self-pitying hysteria that is exactly what I want to do - though I think it thoroughly ridiculous in retrospect) one HAS to be aesthetically pleasing. That is how I have always thought about it, anyway. To elicit pity is a kind of seduction. To cry prettily is an art. (One I do not always practice... ) This my ex-boyfriend (who is present at many of these self-pity-fests) knows. And thus I am mocked. It is horrible to be terribly sincere about something and yet to express it in a form that provokes distrust and disdain and mockery. And leaves me feeling like a silly little girl who can't get what she wants - i.e. pity/comfort/some-sort-of-

reassure-ance-that-everything-is-going-to-be-alright - even if it isn't. *SHAME* Which is itself a self-indulgence - OK everything is a self-indulgence - I give up trying not to be self-indulgent. I have bought a purple flocked notebook for the CBT homework. My last homework *smirks - are smirks becoming...?* was to write a list of pros and cons for pulling my hair out and not pulling my hair out. It sounds pretty simple. Pulling hair out = pain, aesthetic disaster, and public-ally inflicted shame. Not Pulling Hair Out = hair, less pain, and less public-ally-displayed strangeness. I'm not going to tell you what I wrote. This is not Carrie Gooding Reveals All for Trash Magazine (that sounds vaguely pornographic). What I will tell you is that I am terribly curious to see what my therapist makes of it all. The picture I took to go with this makes me look so ridiculously fragile, somehow. That's not how I see myself. I see myself as being terribly terribly resilient - egotistical, moi? That girl in the picture looks younger than me. Paler than me. More bruised. Less adamantine. I can't decide whether to wrap her up in a blanket and like her a mug of hot chocolate or smash her across the face and smear her pretty lipstick. Odd that I should think myself pretty in a photo meant to represent an affliction. Masochism? A heightened intensity of actually looking at the way I look (rather than, as I generally do, trying to see myself in a dimmed sort of a way, as though through flattering lighting at an American interview). So. Young. But notice that the top of my head is hidden. In fact, most of my head is hidden. I've mostly only shown you my face. And it's my face that's undamaged. So some bravery that was.