Stasis - A Video (A Rather Appalling Video, Moreover)

Don't cry for me, Bournemmouthia...

The truth is I shall try harder...

Though it may get duller...

For you to see me...

I will be pretty...

& always will be...

Second Time Unlucky?

Something was technically wrong. I just deleted an hour of rant. By mistake. It was probably for the best. But I still feel sort of bereft...

What I sort of wrote 1: Bloody people. Can't stand the things.

What I sort of wrote 2: But loads of my friends are really brilliant talented people.

What I sort of wrote 3: But I'm usually too ... um ... unwell to do anything brilliant and talented outside of the space of my own skull (or wherever consciousness is located [sudden thought: perhaps this doesn't matter because I am part of a matrix of collective consciousness in which I am but a grain of sand - in which case, fuck it, mediocrity is irrelevant, irrelevancy being one of my favorite accusations when I am feeling accusative, which I have been tonight]

What I sort of wrote 4: Because I am both waving and drowning, sinking into the net of my own tangled neurological pathways and shouting "Look! No hands!" [Even cats have hands...]

What I sort of wrote 5: And I'm bloodily tried. Because I haven't bloodily slept. Because I've been bloodily insomniacal. Because my heart's been bloodily leaping around like it thinks its a chorus girl. I attempt to remind it, sometimes, that it is not a chorus girl. That it is a heart. But it never listens.

What I sort of wrote 6: Thus I am depleted. 

What I sort of wrote 7: Thus creativity and brilliance are somewhat out of my reach, because I'm too tired to jump for them. They expect that from one. As though one is a seal. I am not a seal. I am a tired girl in stripey stockings, a pink silk dress and a black cardigan. And a watch that tells me that I have not slept in 18 hours. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. OUCHBOOM. 

What I sort of wrote 8: I keep being shouted at. By various people. And having to say "shutupshutupshutup" repeatedly and very loudly to shut them up. & having to bite my fingers. As opposed to simply savaging my adversaries like a cross hamster.  No, actually, that was a bad idea... 


What I sort of wrote 9: the day after day marching of this, the separation of the inner and the outer, the whirling of the words through my mind and out again into the sea inexorably, there even if they do not get written down, the ideas streaming though my hands like sand from an endless beach eroded by the sea that is drowning me... So how are you today? Fine. 


What I sort of wrote 10: a picture to sum up the sense of decay... ...oh, that's not going to work either? OK.


Anyhow ... how's the hair? THE is almost thoroughly the word. Pretty awful, actually. I look profoundly butch. Fortunately, butch is not a look that I am terribly averse to, worn by reasonably attractive girls... [insert implication of own attractiveness here] - still, I'd rather not have to wear those BLOODILY uncomfortable wigs anymore! For a night or two they are delightful - but IT IS SUMMER! & I AM HOT! Headaches abound. 

The Royal Fail

I ordered a new wig awhile ago (I have promised myself a wig a month, just so I don't start feeling shabby and horrid & thus pull more in a vaugue subconscious attempt to pull myself into non-existence). And I specified Royal Mail First Class Delivery. And I waited for the delivery. And, instead of the wig, I was delivered a card saying "sorry you were out" andasking me to collect the thing from the collection-office-place. When I was very much NOT out. When I was very much IN and waiting for the delivery. (My doorbell-buzzer-thing is AMAZINGLY loud - and I could not POSSIBLY have not heard it.) So, thought I, I wonder how it is packaged? Can they see what it is? Will they open it? Are they Queening around in it, these Post Office People? Will I turn up to collect the thing (and, indeed, to complain about its non-delivery) to a collection-office-place of sniggering trichophobes? OMG!!! So I stormed down to the collection-office-place (on the basis that crossness is much more enjoyable than social terror) and collected the thing (sensibly packaged wordlessly in non-see-through-plastic, thank God). So... I decide to have the thing discretely delivered ... and it isn't delivered at all. One would imagine that a delivery company might be able to deliver things - apparently not. See below for a picture of said wig (& friend who hopefully wouldn't mind my posting this picture of him, but isn't here to ask, so here goes):

Me looking FANTASTICALLY gawky. But nevermind.

NEVER. GET. KNOWN. FOR. BEING. SENSITIVE.

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.

A Little Souvenir of A Good Day

Today was pretty good, actually... It may not look like it, but good things come to she who waits. 8. I pulled out 8 hairs today. Not so much EPIC FAIL as MINOR SUCEED. If I carry on like this I may look very different soon... & this despite quite a lot to do (& thus quite a lot of stress). Yay for me. (:

Turban Envy

I soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
want one of these:


http://www.vandaburrowsturbans.com/headwear/turbans/peacock-turban.html

How Am I?

I am:

* Absurdly busy (which means that I haven't much TIME in which to pull my hair out, which is good)

* Suffering from occasional chest pains in addition to my usual bouts of minor hyperventilation (which is bad, obviously)

* Possibly splitting up with my boyfriend of 4 years standing (who was cool about me having hardly any hair - who, indeed, thought my shaven-headed self looked rather cute in a Tank-Girl-ish sort of a fashion) (which is both good and bad in various ways, but which means that any new love-of-my-life will have to have the Trich-subject broached to them - oh not again not again!)

*Doing lots of yoga (which is good because it makes me CALMER - MOST out of my hitherto rather frenetic character!)

*Growing the hair on the back on my head (& OH it's all lovely and soft & I can run my fingers through it BLISS BLISS BLISS!)

*Coming to terms with the way I look - ya, I look pretty much alright without much hair, I'm no monster-freak (at least not outwardly - ha ha) ... I'll do. (:

To round off ... I saw a girl with V little hair a couple of evenings ago at a cafe. I won't be more specific because I don't know her and so I couldn't ask her if I could mention her - so I'm being really vague on purpose. Anyway - she had the sort of hair loss which leaves wispy light hair - which lead me to believe she had probably undergone chemotherapy. And I thought - how brave of her to appear in public with visible hair loss. Then I thought - yes, she is brave, but she has (presumably) cancer, which everyone would agree could not possibly be her fault, which means that from any reasonable person she would elicit sympathy rather than disdain (if anything). I, on the other hand, have a condition that is not so easily explained. My hair loss SHOULD elicit (if anything) sympathy rather than disdain from any reasonable person - but not everyone IS reasonable. Some would argue that I had pulled my own hair out and that pulling one's own hair out is a stupid thing to do and people who do stupid things deserve disdain rather than sympathy blah blah blah. It's ... not entirely the same. PLEASE NOTE: OF COURSE I WOULD RATHER HAVE TRICHOTILLOMANIA THAN CANCER. But ... people's reactions might not be equally non-judgmental/blaming/dismissive etc. So ... it's not quite the same.