Facebook is not a good place to linger. It’s nice to share
in people’s joys as they display their highlights reel, but the second thought
after joy for them is, ‘but what about me?! Why have I not been in a photo
shoot, graduated, got pregnant, made something original, been to europe or thought
of something funny to say?” This addiction ends in greater sadness at my own lot.
Sunshine is an antidepressant
Crying is an anti depressant
Tea is an anti depressant
Antidepressants (the official kind) can be wonderful and terrible,
but it is not embarrassing to be on them. Nor is it embarrassing to sit in the
office of a psychiatrist and fight back tears while you tell him that you are
scared of holding cups in case you drop them. The mind is complex, and it’s ok
for it to get sick, just like your body.
If you find a nice medic, don’t move away or let them
retire. If you find a nasty one, cry a bit and get the courage to disengage
them.
You can be happy even when your health gives way and your dreams
are put aside. You can’t be happy if you hold onto the way you thought things would
go. You actually have to surrender, maybe multiple times a day if you’re like
me.
Do whatever you need to do to make life manageable. Dare to
be unlike those around you and dare to be unashamed.
Young marriage may seem like a horrifying idea to the
majority, but the joy I get from knowing that we are stable when the rest of my
life isn’t is indescribable. For me there was nothing more beautiful than the guy I love wanting to commit himself to me, despite my lack of health, career or
certain future. I am slightly scarred from all the comments about how we’re
still babies, but I’m getting over them.
On that note, lots of people will say/do lots of unkind
things to you in your life. Or stupid insensitive things. The longer you are alive and
the more comments you hear, the stronger and more bullet proof you become. Crying,
again, is reccomended for a short spell. {ps. one benefit of an unpopular blog is lack of mean comments.}
Being at home all day long makes you want a baby desperately,
despite physical limitations. Try to be uncommonly rational in this situation
(picture babies crying at 2 am) and get a dog or cat if you are struggling.
Things can be true even if you do not understand them. I
think my life is valuable even though i stay in the lounge on the couch most of
the time. I think I could get better, despite not knowing how.
Every single day, God gives new mercies. Don’t worry if you are
empty the night before, because they don’t come till morning.
i was waiting impatiently in the hair salon, and the fumes
of sprays and chemicals clogged up my nostrils so that i struggled to breathe.
my heart was beating so violently that i had a peak at the left side of my
chest – it was actually visible, the boom boom boom was plain for all to see and i hoped with all of my pumping heart that no one would notice. next i began hyperventilating, in true panic attack
style, and glancing at the door. i needed fresh air, and i thought i would faint
if i didn’t get it. i knew that i could still do a runner or i could just ask
for a trim like i had the last couple of decades. it’s been a long time since i
was in such an anxious mess, and it seemed ridiculous to be using so much emotional
energy on getting a radical hair cut, but at the same time, i wasn’t going to
let myself pike out now. not. now.
this eternity of anxiety did come to an end, when i was
finally speaking with my stylist, showing her pictures, and discussing my
preferences. yes please, a bit of hathaway mixed with williams and a dash of mulligan for good measure. it was a relief to have finished my intense
freak out, although i felt a certain fatigue from all the adrenalin expulsion. my
very lovely, very perfectionist hairdresser took nearly two hours over my new
cut – and i endured some hideous stages, the worst being a long period of
looking just like justin beiber. {same hair shade too. not cool. } at times i wondered if she could actually pull
it off, because the hat-of-thick-hair look was just the complete opposite of chic &
cute. i tried to keep up beat inside, but it wasn’t until she finally
straightened and waxed the ‘do’ that I was put at ease. i had a pixie, and i’d
survived the ordeal.
the best bit was realising that i loved the cut, and the
second best bit was when she said , ‘you have a lot of hair.’ you have a lot of hair. i wanted her to say it again.
for me, this serious cut was more than breaking stereotypes,
doing something i wanted regardless of peer/parental opinion, having a change,
looking a bit more mature. it was a celebration of having my hair fully grown
back from my long struggle with trichotillomania.
{literally: hair mania}
when i was in my early teens, i NEVER EVER thought i would
have boy short hair – i thought i would have a wig. i needed every
long wisp that i had to cover those bald patches. i used heavy duty gel to
stick down the spikes of newly growing hair which would poke through my long
strands and give me away. my adolescence was a lonely scared one. just the word
‘hair’ made me feel sick to the core. i didn’t go to the hairdresser for years
because i couldn’t go {home cuts done in privacy of bedroom} – because they
would find out that i had missing hair, and that would lead to them find out
that i was insane. and then what would happen?
even when i was 19 i felt that i would never be free from
trichotillomania – and in many ways that’s true because it’s always something i
want to do and have to fight.
but have learned the self control to say ‘no’, and that has
enabled me to grow back my hair, each little strand which was plucked out a
hundred times. you can’t have a pixie cut if there is a bald patch, or a thin
area, and that’s why this is a victory.
it was worth admitting it, and getting help, and praying,
and denying my impulse desires to feel that i’m no longer a slave to this strange
addiction. this is a reminder that there is great hope for change and recovery.
that today’s battles can be tomorrow's victories even when we think we are way
beyond help.
"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And
God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can
bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that
you can endure it." 1 Cor 10:13
I believe most women like getting their hair done at the
salon – but I am not most women. I can’t appreciate anything about it until I
am safely home admiring the outcome. I actually find it quite a detestable
experience. It’s not just that I look so hideous with that black protective
cape wrapped around me, my ugly head sticking up through the middle, surrounded
by limp hair...it’s mostly the conversation with the person doing the cutting.
It was a Friday afternoon when I entered the salon.
“Did you get an afternoon off work?” asked my stylist.
“No, I don’t work actually.”
“Oh, so are you a university student?”
I hate these questions, I hate that my life is so
complicated to talk about. At this point I’m thinking ok Danielle, just say ‘I’m recovering from an illness, it’s a long
story, I won’t go into it now’ and end conversation. But my ‘friendly
people pleaser’ side takes over and derides all my plans for non-communication
on this topic.
“No, I had to withdraw from uni. I’ve actually got a chronic
illness...” I say in a near whisper, lest anyone else hear and want to chime
into my interrogation.
“Like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?”
Damn, you clued in hairdresser, I think. How did she pick
it?! And from then on she wants to know all the intimate details of a life
lived with this illness, when it might end, what I do to treat it and more. Delightful,
she is, as she tells me it will end. That I just have to be positive because if
I’m not I will get depression (what makes her think I don’t?) I really do
appreciate her kindness, because I can see she’s a caring woman. But, I can’t bear
discussing these issues with a perfect stranger however kind; I feel so very
miserable and vulnerable as we discuss me and my illness; this is no everyday
chit-chat at the hairdresser, this is my very challenging personal life which I
foolishly told her about. Talking about university, my work place, the
weather...oh for those to be things we could discuss! I long to be ‘normal’.
By now I am feeling distressed and exhausted from the
emotional drain of this conversation. I try to ask her some things, but she
doesn’t take the hint. Not only does she keep asking more and more questions
which I find nearly impossible to answer, I am thinking about my hair pulling issues.
I can see how thin the hair is on the side of my hair that I generally pull
from. I tense every muscle waiting for her to comment on the abnormal thickness
of my hair in some places...tell me that I’m slightly balding somewhere...
“So how is your family coping with it?”
“Oh they’re very supportive, which is great.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
My heart sinks. Not the boyfriend question, please! Before I
have time to think about it, I blurt out,
“Yes, I do.” There it goes, the lie. Now she thinks I have a
boyfriend because I am feeling so
uncomfortable and frazzled I can’t bear telling her that I actually have a
husband – I have not the fortitude to endure all those exclamations of how very
young I am blah blah blah.
“Oh that’s nice. Do you live with him?”
“Yes,” I reply, and then remember that I’m wearing a big
engagement ring and a shiny wedding band, which will expose my lie shamefully
if she sees it when I pay at the counter.
Underneath that black cape I usually so detest, I carefully
slip off my two rings without her noticing. These are desperate times. I place
them carefully in my coat pocket, relieved to have removed all traces of the
truth.
She finishes off my hair, and being very satisfied with my
tidy locks, I hurry out of the chair and pay. As I withdraw my credit card at
the desk, I see on the front the bold words:
Mrs Danielle S Martin
She takes my card, and I wish with all my heart that she
will not see the Mrs. Please no, don’t let her read the card and discover the
discrepancy. My relief is immense as I half run from the salon, and not until I’m
a few meters down the road do I pull out my two rings and slip them onto my
naked finger.
My husband and I laugh hysterically on the way home as I
admit to taking them off to save face at the hairdresser. The worst thing is
that I have done this before, at a different hairdresser. I only do it at the hairdresser,
which I think shows how very stressed I get. I wish with all my heart that I
had handled it better. I also wish that hairdressers didn’t need to converse -
what is wrong with a pleasant silence? I think it unlikely that hairdressers
will change in this regard, so I have decided I will do the changing, and have
resolved afresh to learn to give a closed answer about my health so as not to
become so very distressed. I did role plays with Ben for the next 30 minutes,
practicing over and over closing down the questions about my personal life – he
pretended to be a hairdresser, a stranger at the gym, a sales assistant and I,
for the millionth time said confidently,
“I’m actually recovering from an illness. It’s a bit of a
long story, I’d probably rather not talk about it.”
I’m grateful for such a terrible trip to the hairdresser; it
motivated me to seriously prepare for future conversations. I feel empowered,
ready to face these questions with a sure reply, a confidence that I am under
no obligation to talk about my private life. No more lies at the hairdresser!
I have to turn back the clock by 14 years to begin the story of my missing hair. I’m seven, and in most ways I am exactly like every other 7 year old girl. I play the piano (poorly), I take ballet lessons, I hate maths and mushrooms and prefer dolls and story writing. The only odd thing about me is that I like to sit on the brick wall outside our house, picking at the moss. And I don’t know this is odd, or what it will lead to. I could stay there for an hour, just pulling out those hair-like growths and letting my thoughts wander over the day, over life.
I am terribly embarrassed and distressed when my family says to me at meal times, “Your eye brows are looking moth eaten Dee...have you been pulling them out?” I furiously deny the accusation. Someone suggests that I am using tweezers, copying my mum. Which isn’t at all true. I’ve never touched tweezers, and I’m not sure why I’m missing so many eyebrows... it’s not a conscious decision to remove them, certainly not an attempt to thin the crop.
One morning on camp, my little friend comes up to me. “Oh Danielle! You’re missing eye lashes! How did that happen?!” I freeze inside. I feign surprise. I say that I didn’t know I was missing them, and that they must have fallen out in my sleep. I had been lying in bed the night before, pulling out lash after lash for no reason other than that I felt like doing it.
I only knew two things about my missing hair at this stage:
I do something which other people don’t do.
This thing shocks people, so I must cover it up.
The only thing which concerned me, was how appalled people were when they observed missing hair. Their reactions seemed to accuse me of doing something naughty which puzzled me. To me it felt like sucking my thumb, twirling my hair – something mindless and comforting. And mostly I was unaware, lost in thoughts, considering things over a thousand times.
By the time I had reached my early teens, my little oddity was developing into a big ogre. It seems that I was just growing into my habit rather than out, and it was poised to wreck havoc with my life. With my age had come a hearty dose of self awareness. No longer was I blissfully unaware of my odd habits and my patchy appearance. I was painfully conscious of my problem. I was conscious that I was the only person in my acquaintance with such an issue, and therefore the only person in the whole world.
I had the very thinnest line of eyebrows. Just a scattering remained. There were a few lashes growing out of my eye lids – only a few. But the worst thing was the right side of my head. I had recently run out of hair other places and taken to selecting the thickest, darkest strands of my long hair to remove. It wasn’t the hair that I wanted, it was the root. I would stick my prize possession, a juicy root, in a place to save it - a book, a table...and then keep pulling, always hoping to find a better one, never giving up.
I had never questioned my sanity until this point. But one day, I heard something which terrified me to my core. My mum had a friend over, and they were discussing the friend’s young child. My memory has stripped me of all the details but the gist of what they said was that the child was losing hair, by twirling it and pulling it out. I heard them say something about ‘psychological problem’.
As a 13 year old, I was naive and uneducated about that word - Psychological. To me it meant insane, mad, not-quite-right. This little child was losing hair, and it could be a psychological disorder.
I pull out my hair by the handful, therefore I am insane.
This tiny discovery about the nature of my issue plunged a weight into my heart. A weak sickness seemed to spread right through me. I was crazy! If I had wanted to Google-search my condition, this was the end of that notion. I didn’t want to know the details of my problem, I just needed to stop right now and let the hair grow back and become ‘normal’.
Unlike other habits I’d managed to stop, this one was resistant. It was cruel to me in its fiery refusal to be gone. I tried wearing hats, making promises, praying hard...but each day there would come a point where the only thing I wanted to do was pull out my hair, and the urge was so overpowering that I gave in.
“Just one hair”, I would promise myself. But that one hair wasn’t good enough. It didn’t have a big enough root. It hadn’t fulfilled the cravings inside me. One handful of hair later, I would drop my loot in the rubbish bin, looking at it with repulsion.
Life had become increasingly anxiety provoking. My balding appearance was now impossible to hide, despite my earnest attempts with hairstyles and hair spray. I avoided swimming at all costs, as wet hair showed the baldness far more than dry. This was very challenging considering we had a pool in the back yard, excuses and more excuses. I steered conversations with all my social ability away from topics relating to hair, terrified that someone would mention it and shame me to my very core. I lied to hair dressers outright about the reason for my missing hair (on the very rare occasion that I actually went). I cried night after night about the ballet concert which was coming up, where we had to have our hair in braids: mine wouldn’t go into braids, and then the secret would be out...and I would ruin the whole concert by not being able to have matching hair. I lay awake inventing convincing stories:
“I’m taking a medication which makes it fall out.”
“My hair is just falling out and I don’t know why.”
“My friend cut my hair which is why it’s so patchy.”
In bed I would realise how miserable life had become, how much I wanted to stop. I was so young that it never occurred to me that there could be help out there, that problems can be solved. To me, it was my burden which I had to bear, and ‘trying harder’ was the only solution.
By the age of sixteen I had a little more control than I’d had earlier on – and for a couple of years I went almost free from my addiction. Because I never pulled in public, my being away from home from 6.30 am – 5.30 pm proved to be very helpful. I simply didn’t get the chance to pull it out. The problem waxed and waned over the next few years. It still caused me terror whenever someone wanted to talk about or touch my hair, but it wasn’t half so hard to conceal.
My first year of university arrived, and I was sitting in an aural class watching a girl take a pair of tweezers from her bag to pluck an eyebrow. Her eyebrows looked very sparse. She seemed rather intent on removing the hair that she had decided on, and pulled until it was gone. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her. I knew I had just met the first person in my entire life that compulsively pulled out their hair. Gradually we became better acquainted, and one day in a painfully drab lecture on Music Theory, we sat at the back of the theatre sharing stories about our bizarre compulsive addiction. Our laughter was uncontrollable; I was weak with joy and relief at finding someone just like me. She had seen a doctor and knew that our psychological disorder was called Trichotillomania. She wasn’t insane - she was lovely, funny, and quirky.
I went home and researched it, finding that 4% of people suffer from it. It’s more common in females. Sufferers often suffer from depression or anxiety as well. Finally my condition was out in the open and I began to deal with the years of terror it had given me. I went to a psychologist to learn strategies, and then an Alexander Technique teacher. It went from being my naughty addiction, to a real problem for which there was help and support. I am now the happy owner of a full head of hair, and while I will probably never be urge free, I am armed with strategies to control it. I have finally learnt that ‘psychological disorder’ doesn’t mean ‘mad’, and as my psychiatrist recently assured me, if I don’t have any mad cousins or great aunts it’s rather unlikely that I will ever lose my marbles. Thank goodness!
