Verse About It

...my future fades out into dopamine
explosions of postpartum repentance -
& I renew my same old same sentence
that wraps me round like invisible bars.
It's all very well looking at the stars
if you feel you enough to go outside,
but I am not me, I am less than me,
I am in hiding, like I always hide -
I am in seeking, speaking quiet in tongues
about the silent screams that fill my lungs
so I can't breathe, in or out, or receive
the least ounce of love in my loneliness.
I am set a part, parted into parts -
with little pinpricks of pain, little darts
that dance around my head like little claws -
I am always at the brink of the jaws
of death, a million little deaths,
a pleasurepaindrug, always in demand
& always answered by supplies for the demand -
& nobody to ALWAYS hold my hand(s).
This is a life-in-death, but so subtly
that you wouldn't know just to look at me -
a snapshot of a timeline stretched so taut
that is means nothing but the march of thought
from A to B to C & back again,
parading before me, the teacher's cane
repeating its incisions on my skin
until the lesson has sunk in & in -
but still it comes & goes like the washings of clothes,
a cycle like any other - round, round,
like life & death and burial & birth -
no sooner have I crawled out from the earth
than I am thrown into my grave again,
married to my own hands & my own pain,
walking the same route round into the drain,
a prisoner in a malfunctioned brain.

Day One, Week One, Month One, Inch One

My first "proper" post - & I went & put it (accidentally & not entirely unembarrassingly) on another bog.

*starts again*

This is the first "proper" post (see above) & what have I been up to today?

Pulling?

Well, yes, certainly. Why else the sudden creation of a blog to help me stop?

I cut my hair. That might sound like a strange thing to do, seeing as I want MORE hair, not less - but it was all uneven.

& I dyed it. Purportedly red - actually redcherrypinkpurplered, which is much better than it said on the tin.

When I went to the shop to buy the dye, I wore a hairband.

I like wearing hairbands because they draw attention away from the hair itself (providing a focal point apart from gaps etc), they make short hair look more pretty, & they help me delineate a minifringe, if I happen to want one (which, today at least, I very much do).

Unfortunately, I have a gaping great hole in the back of my hair. Which I didn't know about. Exactly. That is... I knew I had a gap. I could feel it. But I had absolutely no idea how big it was. Or how thin the hair was around it. Why not? Didn't I look? No, actually. I've gotten into the habit of doing everything with my hair via touch: I cut it via touch, I check the damage via touch (it's less monumentally depressing than looking at it).  So I had no...i...dea.

Does it bother me that I've been wandering around looking like (gulp) THAT? Yes & no - yes because it certainly wasn't intentional & I dislike the idea of the reactions people who don't know me might have to it - no because there have been times (MANY times & OFTEN when I would have done silly & hyperbolical things to have hair even as long as the thing bit. So it's super it's there. It really is.

So what now? I don't feel exactly comfortable going out looking like that. But I don't feel exactly comfortable with not going out until it grows back, either (I mean, I actually MUST, I have things to do).

Well, for now, if I'm out of doors amidst people (the dreaded people, without whose occasionally appallingly brutal responses to my hair loss my hair loss would have been a great deal easier to cope with - it only takes one intentionally or unintentionally hurtful comment to knock my confidence for days, sometimes longer, afterwards - in fact, I still remember the most hurtful things people said to me at school, forheaven'ssakes, which is wildly neurotic of me, & ... unhelpful), I'll just have hat it. But that's alright. I like hats. & it's Hat Weather.

Hello

Hello,

This is the latest of a series of blogs about me & my trichotillomania (if you don't know what trichotillomania is, may I suggest you Firefox it).

I am at a rather pivotal stage at the moment, somewhere in-between having hair & not having hair. & I'd quite like to end up doing/having the former rather than the latter. Thus. This. Blog.

Which will be for anything relating to that endeavor. & will probably include photos etc.

Since it's not meant for your amusement (dear general reader), please keep comments to a minimum unless they are supportive. Fellow trichotillomaniacs are welcome to comment.

Today (it's 5PM) I have pulled out quite a lot of my hair. But I have also set up this blog, so that's positive. Anyhow. See you (me/this/here) later.