Trichotillomania

Hey people!

I was intending to write this post in the morning but the videos I just saw messed my mood up and I don’t want to sleep anymore, at least not before speaking.

Nine years ago, I started pulling out my hair from the top of my scalp. I had a healthy thick hair and I remember during my homework, I’d pull it out from the roots without even noticing. Then, the next day when I’d go to the classroom and open my notebooks, I’d notice all the hair in there and just throw it. I came up to realize I was pulling my hair and first didn’t care. But then, when I started noticing it was quite unhealthy, I tried to stop it but couldn’t. One day, my mom saw my hair and she was horrified for I turned out bald in the top of my scalp. When I saw it in the mirror, I really realized the extent of my destruction. Some of you may not know it and others do: I put a scarf on. Just saying that because you may wonder people why people of school didn’t notice this.

I started wearing my scarf at home until I got rid of this habit but started pulling out my eyebrows. Boy! They still remember me back in these days when I didn’t have freaking eyebrows or just liiiiiittle bits of them here and there. People of the outside started therefore asking me if I had cancer, lice, some skin disease or something. They just couldn’t believe I’d pull out my eyebrows just like that. I’ve had more than my fair share about reasons why I’m doing this: girls would say I’m trying to do my eyebrows without tweezers. Boys would go I’m trying to get their attention…Not that I cared, even my friends didn’t believe me when I said I couldn’t even realize I’m doing it.

Yeah, because I’d totally go eyebrows-less for fun just to scare the crap out of people.

Eventually, as I attended prep’ classes, I switched from eyebrows to eyelashes then picked on my skin like crazy. I started the second year with an irritated skin which yet was bearing my treatment and pratically no eyelashes and half eyebrows. I ended my prep’ classes with no eyelashes at all and milia – little white spots- over my skin which I’d pick on and which got worse.

During my engineering years, I scratched the shit out of my face and it got so much worse this year my original color was no longer appearing. It was like I had a bad tan on my face whereas the rest of my fucking me was white.

As I’ve told you this year in some posts, I took this summer vacation as an opportunity to decrease my scratching and take care of my bowels and skin. I no longer scratch my skin like yeah and I’m curing myself and it’s all for good.

At home, people were like “Y U DO THAT?”. At the dermato office, the med just doesn’t understand why I scratch and tells me boldly to “Stop scratching”. In addition to that, he/she -I had too many dermato in my life- doesn’t want to hear how these spots started and always gives me the same crappy medicine for acne which doesn’t work at all.

Now, I got in an argument with my last dermato and she agreed to at least hear what I have to say to her. She looked into my problem and said I had milia and not acne and gave me proper medicine. Now I’m healing, milia isn’t really really gone but it’s wonderfully decreasing.

And just two hours ago, I stumbled upon this article.

I checked on Youtube and found this girl, Beckie:

During these whole years, no one considered my condition as a mental sickness and frankly there was no support at all. I myself believed that I was just doing that to myself. You could think a brilliant puzzled garbage critter could take a hint and roam the sea of the internet?

No. When all you keep hearing is this:

You kind of end up believing it.

I can’t say I’ve been through this thing like Beckie. I’ve never had a proper interest in my looks. Honestly, as long as I’m healthy and strong – which for me isn’t this DUH! as it is for others-, I’m all good. I didn’t care for a boyfriend and still don’t, going bald was always an alternative I’ve considered wisely. And when people are always around me bothering me with the same observations everytime I just grab a book and don’t give an ear.

But when I watched these videos, I couldn’t help but cry. I cried for Beckie (For notice, if you have unbearable periods, hallucinative fevers and dying kittens you’ve tried to breed yourself so hard, I’ll cry for you. And the thoughts of these things make my eyes already wet. I’m not a crybaby, I swear è___é and I’m going to hit you if you believe it! Oh I’m so not in the mood to joke.). I cried for myself too, because I ended up believing what people told me about this being only a freaky habit of mine and that it may be a subconscious need to mutilate myself or to bring attention to me.

So, I’m making this post to ask you people to please raise awareness about this disease. Please if you see someone with such obsessive compulsive behaviour, make him/her aware. Please support him/her! Please give hugs and try to help! Please avoid hurtful lines and understand, try to understand how lucky you seem to him/her and to me for you actually don’t feel any need to pull out or scratch.

Spread the message, be aware and make people aware.