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.

Brilliantness!

So ... I now have a new (real hair) wig. I feel MUCH MUCH MUCH more confidant. (I know I sound like an advert ... I can't help it.) It has been tested to the limit. I have slept in it. I have wandered into a December sea in it (I'm impulsive). I have worn it in pigtails. I have worn it down. I have brushed it and brushed it just for the sake of brushing it. It is wonderfully soft. It feels different to a synthetic wig. & the idea of wearing hair someone else grew ... appeals to my sense of the macabre. I want to show it off. The evening before last, I did. I performed poetry at a theatre (open-mic). And, although no-one there knew (presumably) that I was wearing a new wig, so there was no opinion-gauge-ing, I felt A LOT more confident than I would have done otherwise. I wandered up and down outside the train-station on the way there, admiring my reflection in the windows. MOST enjoyable. I strode up onto the stage and (despite the fact that I was actually SHAKING with stage-fright) gave what I consider to have been a successful performance. And that was partly because of my increased confidence. It is also very cool to be able to wander out into the communal hallway for my post without doing anything to my hair. I look forward to cooking for people (because, before, I couldn't go near steam, in case my wig was damaged by the heat - that goes for drinking hot coffee, too). I look forward to worry-free sleepovers - knowing that my wig won't get skewed. I look forward to all sorts of things! Yes, it cost me more than my wigs normally cost. However. I am enjoying every penny of it. So it's worth it.

All of the above is not to say that wearing a real hair wig will be the right choice for everyone. Thus far, though, it seems to be the best choice for me.

I am ONE WEEK PULL FREE! Which deserves capitalisation, methinks. This is a TREMENDOUS improvement for me. And I have done it without really thinking about it. Perhaps I have been super-happy because of my new wig. Perhaps it's because my hair isn't really available to to be pulled out. Perhaps it's because I feel more confident that I am not forever doomed to succumb to the Trich. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm very happy!

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps...

I am writing this as a (uncustomary) sleeping-tablet slowly kicks in. So ... if I suddenly collapse onto my keyboard in silence and sleep ... or incoherence ... that's why. Tomorrow I have an appointment at the hairdressers. First time in at least 5 years that I've been ... hairdresser ... even in a wig-related fashion. So ... I'm scared. Basically. Why? Because I'm not entirely sure how much it will cost. I assume it will cost far more than I first calculate. And, because this is a major investment for me (whose - perfectly nice - wigs generally cost all of £35) , in case SOMETHING GOES WRONG. The idea that SOMETHING MIGHT GO WRONG haunts just about everything I do. At a vast variance to my less-subconscious protestations of invulnerability. Yes - if the world crumbled to dust at my feet (an extreme possibility - but a possible one) - I might possibly be able, with a disdainful toss of the head, to transcend such a disaster. But really really really I want for this to go well. And I will be being scrutinised by a person for, say, half-an-hour. A frightfully intense inter-communication between myself and a complete stranger. There will be practically no option for me to simply walk out if the whole thing becomes too utterly utter. I will need to keep my mind clear and calm to make whatever decisions need to be made. The responsibility weighs over me like a heavy black cloud. It is at noon. I am not generally even AWAKE by noon! *screams inwardly with a Virginia-Woolf-esque terror in the face of time*. I will be attending the appointment alone. ALONE. No comrade will march in there with me and face whatever has to b e faced, make whatever decisions have to be made, with me. No-one will syncopate their footsteps with mine. No-one will wheel in and out of cafes and murmur things about coffee and suchlike and stare their intensity - and mine - into the sea. For my comrades are GONE. Dispersed between the counties. And I am reading 'The Waves' and the poignancy is heightened. Come to Bournemouth! I exclaim! Come to see the coast! Come to see me! And now when and if these terribly delicately tied-to-one people do kestrel-like strike their talons into my glove (I did say I have taken a sleeping tablet...) then I will be more undamaged, less synthetic, more hopeful. And I hope, wearing a wig all the time, that I will be able to think about it less. Jump out of bed in the morning and RUN AWAY into the city and towards the sea. AWAY from the catatonia of hesitating before I go out. I want to be able to run into sand-emblazoned storms and flick the salt from the ends of my hair as in foams in the air and the people scurry hunched away from the striking of the sand. I want to be able to nuzzle into cushions without synthetic fabrics, slightly frizzed, scratching me like softened barbed wire. Come not closer than us, they seem to say, when people brush my hair but from my face and look at me with a heightened sense of my delicacy, of my breakability. The hesitation is unbearable. I want people not to be frightened of breaking me. I want to be able to be rebellious again and throw myself down to sleep on bombed-church-ed roundabouts, walk through the waves as they smash over my head. Not always to think - what about my wig, what if my wig comes off? This prim hesitancy is an inauthentic shade of malaise - and it is abhorrent to me. I hope I hope I hope they glue it all the way round. So my fingers cannot creep round the edges (hands have played major parts in my dreams of late). They showed me a wig to be half-glued on, though. With a clip at the back. To clip into ... what, exactly? My hair (what there is of it) is very VERY short. So ... we shall have to see about that. Also - would I not still be able to pull my hair out? Would my wig not still move at night? These things can be ... discussed, no doubt. OH OH OH I do hope it will all be alright *hushes the slightly painful attempts of her heart to beat in double time*.

Therapy is Driving Me Mad - So I'll Leave Therapy

Over the last couple of weeks and days I have increasingly descended into a miasma of introversion. It was a week or so ago when I decided that the reason for this was therapy. The little sub-audible whisperings of therapy-memory. I am blah blah blah etc. Which is why blah blah blah etc. Which is why I need to blah blah blah etc. I suppose I have been becoming increasingly two opposites - terribly terribly cross and terribly terribly apologetic. These two whirl around and around picking to speed until ... this morning I start talking quite calmly about the fact that I hate it then my voice becomes louder and finally I realise I am crying and The Snark (my ex-boyfriend/co-inhabitant) has quietly arm-enfolded me and I am explaining how thoroughly ... um ... DISSOLVING the whole thing is. To be imprisoned in a room with someone who thinks you have gotten it all wrong - and, not understanding it really, to agree and think IF I AGREE WITH YOU WILL YOU PLEASE JUST MAKE THIS STUPID ILLNESS GO AWAY?!? PPPLLLEEEAAASSSEEE?!? You know, that's her JOB. When people are somehow physically unwell - they just get cured. When people are somehow mentally unwell (even in some minor obsessional way, like me) then they get ... DECONSTRUCTED. And what is left? An intact body and no mind? No personality? A workable being/non-person/somehow-acceptable-person with nothing else? So you see if she wants to take away my personality - then I hope she has a new one waiting in the sidelines. She doesn't seem to. She doesn't seem to want me to have this personality or any other. And so I am retreating and retreating in a sort of passive-aggressive conscious catatonia. If everything I say and do is going to be unfavorably critiqued by her, I'd better not say or do anything. It's a life, you know, not a novel. If it's not stylistically in keeping with the others on my shelf - well - I'm not going to damn well rewrite myself for the sake of symmetry. If that will mean that I will have my life critiqued by idiots who don't/can't/won't mind their own business - then fine. I'm sure I can withstand that. If I don't have my foundations chipped away at regularly every fortnight by someone paid by the NHS/government to do so. And yes - the whole thing does make me paranoid. It points out to me the extreme differences which can exist (usually covertly) between my experience/theory-of-everything and those of ... those of the people who have had their views ... officialised? And then I have to pretend that I garee. And they know I'm pretending. And they try to make me better so that I don't have to pretend any more. And I look at them with incomprehension and a growing sense that they think that I'm mad. Simply - mad. And can't see that I'm mad. And I look at them with a growing contempt for the lack of their logic. Their inability/refusal to realise/agree-with-me that their views are no less of a sham than mine. They are just an easier sham. A sham that works for them. A sham that does for them what they want it to do for them. Whereas mine - amuses me. That's all I want really - for life to amuse me to entertain me and not to damn well expect too much of me. Not that I'm not capable of it - just that I hate it. And I (frankly)consider myself far to important to give up everything I enjoy - anti-social/removed/detached/pathological - as that may be - simply so that they will think I'm telling the truth when I exclaim in mock-surprise 'OF COURSE you are right - I should care dreadfully a lot about whether people like me [I've tried that - it didn't work] and about whether or not my world-view tallies with that of other people and about whether or not I fit into your capitalist society - yes pour the shame of me over me and how much better I will be! How much tamer [insert social-cohesion-producing fake-laugh here]!' Whereas actually I want to tear your face off. And call you an impudent bloody moron. And hole-punch your tongue [yes, I can see that...]. AND so on AND so forth until you finally LEAVE ME ALONE. Or make stop what I want you to make stop rather than making EVERYTHING stop. It would be far simple to just knock me out if you're going to take away my consciousness (in hiding from you) as well as my habit... And then I would have an excuse to retaliate. In refusing to attend any more therapy sessions, I am dismissing you. Dismiss whatever insults your own soul, Whitman said. Yes, well... GOODBYE. FUCK VERY OFF. I'm tired of trying to look at the world and finding that I can't really because my vision is too blurred with panic and wrongness and suchlike and trying to breathe and finding that I cannot I cannot and wondering if I am doing that on purpose to plummet myself into oblivion away from IT ALL. Yes - a lot of what I do I do on purpose. A rebellion. It's my life and I'll fuck it up if I want to, fuck it up if I want to, fuck it up if I want to, you would fuck it up too if you were so besieged by people trying to save you from yourself as though your self were something to be saved from. I'M. NOT. THAT. ILL. Get over it. What I am is very seriously tired of being defined, in a snowballing sort of a way, as some sort of tortured waif because I do this one little thing... It could be a lot worse. I'm tired of explaining of apologising of talking about it. I want to live as though it had never happened. As though it isn't happening. As though it will never happen again. I don't want to talk about it. Yes - I am talking about it now. But the point is - I am much more than a few unfortunate self-tearings. And maybe - has nobody ever thought of this - maybe I sometimes do that because I am overwhelmed by being happy...? A lot of the time, believe it or not, I really am terribly, almost faintingly, happy. And then I want to throw myself into the sea, smash myself against walls, somehow rend myself into atoms and dissipate into the ENTIRE UNIVERSE! Because it simply isn't fair, being one person - being at all limited. I don't live - I simmer. A lot of the time I want to scream - for one reason or another. But this focus on the wrongness of hysteria is so restrictive - I can't breathe in in, this corset of words inflicted on me by people who whom I don't agree. I DON'T AGREE!!! Is that alright with them? Evidently not. This is my arrogance. This is my lack of acceptance of other people. BUT WHAT BOUT YOU ACCEPTANCE OF ME?!? Do I not count? Saintly as the idea seems, of me accepting everyone in order for them to then accept me, it seems very biased, very torturous. In fact, pathologically torturous. I suppose what they want me to do is not to fling myself onto the ground and scream 'accept me - stamp on me and tell me I'm mad and kill my personality and accept me because by that point I will like you so much!' - I think they want something more subtle, more insidious. They want me to GIVE IN. NEVER!!! NEVER!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!!!! They CANNOT make me. In that lies my autonomy, and I WILL NOT rescind it. This may all seem a little overwrought. The point is, though, I'm fighting for my life. I'd rather pull my hair out, tear myself limb from bleeding tearing dying limb, than give up on my identity. The first time I will allow myself to rot, to decompose, to come apart - is when I am dead. If my life is a game (and the metaphor appeals to me...) then I'll play it how I want. And anyone who doesn't like that doesn't have to play. I don't NEED anyone apart from ME. I'm perfectly happy on my own. I feel most that I am myself on my own. With other people I bend myself out of shape. And then stand horrified looking at the vandalism. I am going to BE MYSELF. And damn the consequences. Is that OK with you? If not, BYE.