It's been about thirteen years since it started. I don't really know when it was, but I know that I was eleven years old when my grandfather noticed the effects, when I swore to stop, and when the lie began.
He was so worried. He insisted that my parents send me straight to the doctor who, baffled, sent me to the dermatologist. I was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata, and given a topical medication to be applied three times a day. It burned all of the tiny little wounds. When it proved inadequate, the dermatologist began giving me corticosteroid injections, between twenty and thirty injections all about my scalp each visit, every six weeks for nearly a year. This, too, provided no results and eventually the doctors were out of ideas.
I bore all of this knowing that the drugs would do nothing for me. I knew I didn't have alopecia, and never had. I endured all of these treatments for another reason. I took a deep breath and focused on the overly large portrait of the lilly that hung in the lab when the needle prodded over and over for my stubborn vein so they could test my blood for hypothyroidism or whatever other imbalances could be the cause. I personally applied every application of the burning, stinging topical remedy, making tears form in my eyes as its alcohol and other ingredients lit all of the neigh invisible lesions on fire. I held my fists clenched and my teeth gritted for every needle prick followed by the flow of what felt like little pockets of acid being pumped in between my scalp and my skull.
I endured all of these things as an attempt to punish myself, to teach myself to stop...but it never worked. I'm not sure when I knew that it wasn't going to, but I continued on to keep up the facade, the lie. I continued out of shame, and the inability to look my family in the face and tell them why why hair was coming out.

I couldn't tell them that I was doing it to myself.

Trichotilomania.

When I went in to treatments I resolved that I would endure what I needed to, and between the negative reinforcement of the treatments and my own willpower I would stop. It would be all over; I would no longer feel ashamed or alone. But it never worked, and I felt more ashamed and alone than ever before. Eventually, the doctors ran out of ideas, I feigned an acceptance of an illness that was out of human control, and I secretly succombed to the personal torment that has been my life ever since.

I'm crying now, as I type, because in remembering all of theses things I remember so strongly the look of love, concern , and pain on my grandfather's face everytime he noticed and mentioned my "alopecia"... and the sheer agony it causes me to know that I couldn't stop it, I couldn't ever tell him the truth, and I'll never be able to. He worried so much about me - about my health, my safety, and my happiness - from the moment I was born until the moment he died, and I was never able to stop. Even as I pictured the look on his face and the tears in his eyes when they told him that there was nothing more they could do, I still methodically pulled away...

Methodically, systematically, the same routine every time. I select a target, not a smooth strand, it must be a kinky, jagged one. (This rule does not apply to eyelashes or eyebrows, which is actually where this fixation began...I moved on to the hair on my head shortly after, for the obvious reason that I ran out of hair on my face) It started as only one hair at a time, but I soon moved on to grasping the target hair and any of the surrounding ones, sometimes it's in numbers that it sickens me to think about. Once selected, I tighten my grip, generally pressing it between my fingernail and the pad of one of my fingertips (this is why I have callouses on my thumb, pointer, and middle fingers). Then, obviously, I pull. A brisk, firm pluck. I can hear the muffled sound and feel the momentary burst of pain as the hairs are torn from the follicles where they had been struggling so hard to thrive. I look at the roots. Sometimes they have no roots at all, and I just toss them aside. If they have roots, I rub the roots accross my lips a couple of times. Sometimes, they have this fairly long, translucent, creme colored casing around the end and the root that in my research I can only assume is what is called the "root sheath." When this is present, I do the same thing as if it had a root, but then use my fingernails to strip this casing off, leaving just the strand of hair with a very soft part at the end, before just tossing it away. I perform this entire process in a matter of about (literally) two seconds. Then, I repeat until the urge subsides. This could be a matter of seconds or a matter of hours, or it could be something I just absentmindedly do throughout the course of the day; while talking on the phone, driving a car, reading, or periods of inactivity at work. (I'm actually fairly proud of myself that I haven't done it once during typing this, because I usually do it while thinking about how to word or punctuate something while typing...how pathetic is that?) Usually when I'm done, I will rub the now slightly itchy would that I have created, sometimes there is a drop or two of blood, depending on how many I pulled and how long this particular "session" was.

In a normal day I can't honestly say I go an entire hour without doing it at least once, although it has become so commonplace to me that I have "caught" myself doing it even in broad view of everyone around me without realizing it.

I started this blog as a way to start communicating wit myself in an attempt to begin another campaign to try to gain control of it. I hope that this one will not be like the last blog I started in this manner: I hope this is not my last post.

For now, however, it is time to go out to the obligations that I have this evening. I will try to be back as soon as possible. Who knows, perhaps I'll keep crying when I get these things out, and perhaps I'll keep feeling the same sense of relief after I do...

Perhaps it will help...