Well, I was 23 on Wednesday, and I decided, with glorious self-belief I WILL NEVER PULL MY HAIR OUT NOW THAT I AM 23 - THIS WILL BE A TURNING-POINT. And by Saturday, there I was, pulling my hair out again. Having said that, that's 3 days of pull-free-ness. Which is pretty amazing for me.
I think the issue is this: I didn't have TIME to pull my hair out for that 3 days. On the first day (how Biblical) I was not very well at all (I'm still not - the claws of malaise have hooked themselves into my lungs & I'm off for a bloodtest to check my immunity levels on Tuesday). On the second day I was at the doctor's, shopping for a bag to go to the opera with, and at the opera. On the third day, having returned home to a VAST tiff with my - is he my boyfriend at the moment? I never can tell... - at circa 3AM, I was mostly asleep. Then the dreariness of the malaise caught my psyche up in its paws, the petty tennis-match of mutual destruction tore at my happiness levels, and I found myself playing computer games all day, or reading all day, and pulling my hair out all day too, inbetween fits of coughing (ouch! ouch!). Yesterday I took matters in hand and cheered myself up with a gargantuan Chinese takeaway. However. I am still pulling my hair out. And the turning point has passed. And I find myself taking comfort in silly things, like, "The girl in the first Star Wars film" (yes I watched the first Stars Wars film as an accompanyment to my gargantuan Chinese takeaway "hasn't got any hair, and she's pretty!" leading, later and more dismally, to "If I were as pretty as the girl in the Star Wars film, I wouldn't need any hair!" leading to "I'm fat! I'm bald! I look like a whale!" Now ... yes. I am technically "overweight", whatever that unpleasant term may mean. "Underweight" people may look at me as they would look at a poster dipicting the dangers of eating. This is not, incidentally, because I eat too much - I really don't think I do. It is becuase I spend so much of my time not moving very much - reading and writing and hiding from the world becuase I feel so very open to its criticism (I know ... be brave ... but I don't want to have to be brave, I want the world - read, the inhabitants of the world - to be nicer). The dictates of sense tell me that, looking at huamity as a whole, I am not bad-looking. BUT IT ISN'T ENOUGH screamed Snow White's stepmother. MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL... But looking at mirrors makes me feel better. The mirror tells me that I am not the bloated monklike creature I sometimes imagine myself to be. I just look - damaged. The comments people have thrown at me over the years have not helped, twisting me into a mythical beast of vast and alarming proportions. As though I'm not really human at all ... some ... thing ... masquarading as one. My personality perhaps warrants this appraisal - but not my appearance, surely. "You look ... odd." "You are a curious ... creature. Delightful ... but a CREATURE all the same." That sort of ... thing. It tears great wads of parchment from my lifenarrative. "You're not that sensitive, SURELY?!?" (cut to montage of me taking great and marvellous and ingenious revenge on my enemies - but, the thing is, they're not my enemies, they are insenstitive people, not people who have intentioanlly set out to floor me with the lascerations of their tongues, simply people who have not been suffiently imaginative, for the space of their insensitivity-voicing, to understand the point-of-view of their intercoluter - having said that some people have SAID to me that they have intended to floor my ego, to make me cross, and what strange sadomasochistic mindgames the odd odd people I seem to magnet to myself play, brilliant, awful, boorish, clever idiotic things!) *screams heartily then resumes writing*
NEVER. GET. KNOWN. FOR. BEING. SENSITIVE.
"How big are you trying to get?" my semiboyfriend exclaimed, en route to picking me up some things at a shop. No caramel chocolate for me, then. This mirrors the moment he suggested I "get off" my "fat arse" and "do something". (Here lies shattered my ego. RIP ego. I loved you once.) I was doing something. I was reading. A murder mysetry, I finished it in 2 days. Despite having gone to the opera during one of them. (By myself. Becuase he bleated that he had nothing to wear. The chap next to me was wearing jeans. JEANS! To the OPERA! SCANDAL! SHOCK! HORROR! But surely then my darling's pinstripes and waistcoats and shirts would not have been so bad?) Is that inaction?!?
To return to the main subject of of this little ink-spillage, I had instigated a method by which I congratulated myself on my sucesses, rather than berating myself for my failures. Every day, I would write what percentage Pull-Free I was. Every hair I pulled out (& I counted them) would detract from the 100% with which I began the 24hours. (I presumed pulling over 100 out was unlikely, but that would remain 0%PullFree.) So, rather than exclaiming to myself I'VE PULLED ONE OUT! DISASTER! MIGHT AS WELL CARRY ON NOW! I would whsiper to mysef well that was rather sad wasnh't it but never mind you're still 99%pullfree let's keep it that way shall we?
MAIN ISSUE: I MUST LOOK AFTER MYSELF! Rather than half-destroying myself and hoping someone takes pity on me and makes me better. Why? Because of the moral qualms? No. I think it would be perfectly alright for someone else to nurse me back to health if they wanted to and knew what they were getting into. It would be vastly heroic of them. It would be a marvellous and filmic scene of selfishness and selflessness. And not everyone can be selfless. What would that leave the selfless people to do? In all seriousness, now, the real reason I need to be able to look after myself is that other people are not always around, other people are not always reliable, and other people are apt to suddenly rebel and resent their past goodness, however innocent one has been of ever actually ASKING for their help. Such are the vagaries of human behaviour. Once one has accepted somebody's help, be it even so slightly as asking them to look over a chart recording one's progress, they are all to apt to suddenly have a bad day and explode with the rasped words I ALWAYS DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU AND WHAT DO I GET IN RETURN, EH?!? NOWT! YOU UNCARING PSYCHOPATH! WHAT D'YOU EVER DO FOR ME, EH?!? NOWT! When the answer, of course, is that they never seemed to NEED any help. Whereas I... The Lesson: Keep your own counsil, lick your own wounds, attend your own mini-funerals, and none can say you nay.
I intend to return to the recording of the percentages. And I intend to remind myself that the summer is looming and I want to take my kayak out into (or hopefully rather over) the sea and that to do so I first need to attend a safety course and that to do THAT requires hair or humiliation. I would also like to take this oppurtunity to remind myself that I will be living fairly communally for a week in a couple of months and that, however wellmeaning, I am tired of pity, of concessions made, of alterations etc etc etc. I WANT TO BE NORMAL in this (if no other) respect. Therapy has failed me. I'm on my own. I MUST GET BETTER. I DEMAND TO GET BETTER,. NOT, PLEASE, ANOTHER 11 YEARS OF FEELING SO BLOODY AWFUL. The extremity of my youth has passed, marred by this illness. This illness that I am unlucky enough to have which, unlike so many other illnesses, does not seemt to have an obvious cure. JUST MY LUCK. (SELF-PITY ALERT! SELF-PITY ALERT! IT COULD BE SOMETHING PHYSICALLY PAINFUL, OR FATAL, OR...)
And here arriveth my milkshake, made by a beautiful man, delivered in my own favorite purple glass with flowers etched on it - things aren't all bad.
