So, here I am, blogging again. Two whole days in a row! Shocking isn't it? Today I wanted to share something that is very personal to me. I wouldn't even have thought of sharing it until I read this blog post by another blogger.
(http://www.littlemissmomma.com/2010/06/i-have-secret.html)
Her secret is my secret. It is laced with embarrassment, self loathing, and lots of denial. And I'm not going to lie, I am nervous as heck to be posting this! I am a shy and private person, but I feel the need to do this. So, here it goes!
My story begins my freshman year of high school. I remember the day I started to pull my hair out so clearly. I was sitting in English on the row closest to the teacher's desk and we were doing something on our own. I was thinking and started to fiddle with my hair when all of a sudden I found a strand that was thicker and wavy with a different texture than the rest of my hair. The feeling of that hair was so different and it intrigued me to run my fingers over it. So I pulled it out. That hour, sitting in that class, was destructive. By the end of the class I had a pile of hair on my lap which, I know, is disgusting, but I actually felt good. I had thick hair and it was always getting in my way. Even having pulled out that much, my hair was still thick, but it didn't feel as thick as it had and, sadly, I felt better. I went home that day and continued to pull. I remember, I didn't think it was gross or strange, I think I was more fascinated by this ability I had to just pull it out and it didn't hurt.
The sad thing about my, personal, situation is that, for me, it doesn't just stop at hair pulling. I also pull at my eyelashes and my eyebrows. I have fought with this for the past ten years and it has been devastating. While for a while it was intriguing and fascinating, it soon became my deepest darkest place. When I first started out, I would pull hair from all one spot, because it felt good. I don't know how that makes any sense, but it just felt relieving. So, I would end up with bald patches that I had to try to cover up. Which wasn't too hard at the beginning, but then I would have tufts of hair growing back and those were harder to hide. I look back at pictures of myself around that time and I can see the bumps in my hair. Eventually I began to pull at my eyelashes. For some reason it was like they would begin to itch and pulling them out was the only thing that would make the itch stop. When I had almost pulled out all of my eyelashes I learned about false eyelashes and I began to experiment with the piece lashes that could fill in where I had pulled holes in my eyelashes. I was deeply embarrassed by all of this. I didn't want anyone to notice. I honestly didn't really think of it as any kind of problem that I might have, I just thought it was something I did. Then came my eyebrows. I started pulling them because I hated plucking them. And it didn't hurt as much if I just used my fingers, so I did. Which also was fine for a little while, until it started to feel good to pull them out and I ended up with bald patches in them which I had to try to cover up with eye shadow.
I became a pro at covering it up. I figured out that if I pulled from somewhere in the middle of my hair that it wasn't as noticeable, that if I pulled a few from all over, I wouldn't end up with the bald patches. So I continued.
I honestly thought I was the only one who did this. I thought I was weird, disgusting, and I kinda gave up on myself and never expected anything better than the humiliation of pulling out my own hair.
When I hopelessly failed my first year of college because I honestly lacked the ability to get out of bed, I learned that I had depression. In high school I had been diagnosed with ADD (which, contrary to popular belief is much different than ADHD) and I had taken medication for it (which I honestly didn't feel helped me more than to make the tiniest of dents in my problems with school)but I had no idea that I might be dealing with depression. When I came home from my mission I started thinking about my depression and I realized that I must have had it most of my life since it is practically impossible for me to remember a time, before then, that I was actually, genuinely happy.
When I was about twenty one, I learned that my hair pulling was actually a disorder. And I wouldn't have had any idea until a dear friend of mine talked to me about it, because she had noticed and had actually seen or read something about a disorder that fit my symptoms.
That night I stayed up so late reading about Trichotillomania, sometimes referred to as Trich. I remember feeling so broken because I had one more thing wrong with me to add to the already long list. And yet, I still didn't do anything about it. Trichotillomania is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and some people have been able to control theirs with medication. I have yet to have been able to control mine. Granted, I haven't tried any medications other than my anti depressants and ADD meds.
With Trich, there are individual triggers for each person who has it. I'm not entirely sure what mine are, but I know that most, if not all, of them start with stress. I'm still learning how to manage mine and how to not pull out my hair. I've had periods where I'll be really good about not doing it. Or I'll only pull my hair and leave my eyelashes and eyebrows alone. But those come and go. As I write this, I have holes in my eyelashes from where, weeks ago, I started to pull on them because I had mascara on them and I wanted it off. But, I haven't pulled out any hair for a few weeks.
There is light at the end of every tunnel. Just as I thought that I couldn't remember a time when I had ever been actually happy, now I can. Now, I am very happy, and I can remember so many happy times I've had since I've been home from my mission.
I guess that's another admission I should make, in the spirit of revealing secrets that I don't want to keep anymore. On my mission, I was very sick for most of it. Now when I say "sick" I do mean physically, but I also use this word to refer to my depression. To those of you who think that depression isn't an illness, as real as the flu, I'm sorry but you are tragically wrong. I wish that I could just decide how I want to feel. I wish that I could just let it go and not feel sad for no reason whatsoever at the most random of times. I wish that I could make the physical pain and exhaustion, caused by depression, just go away. But, most of the time, I can't because I don't have control of it. I do the best I can, I try to stay positive, I try to make myself do what I don't feel that I physically can. The dangerous part of that is, when I try to make myself do what I can't, it begins the spiral. I begin to feel bad about myself because I can't pull myself up and do the dishes, which brings on the depression even more and I feel more exhausted and deeply depressed. So it is thin line that I walk every single day. So, on my mission, many things happened that just aren't worth hashing out here, but my depression took great hold of me. My mission meant everything to me. I loved it. So I was devastated when, completely out of the blue, my mission president told me he thought it was time I go home because I wasn't going to get any better there. I didn't want to go home. I wanted to do what I had been called to do. The problem was, I couldn't physically do it at that moment. I remember being so frustrated because I KNEW I could finish my mission. I KNEW I could be a good missionary. But, as I knelt that night to ask the Lord what He would have me do, I got the most powerful answer I had received up to that point. And, as most of you know, I went home.
At the time, this was crushing. And, as I knew then but understand better now, the hair pulling was connected to the depression and I began to heal. On my mission, my Trich had been worse than it had been since about my junior year of high school. I barely had eyelashes, I barely had eyebrows, and I could not stop pulling my hair. But it DID get better. I went to school, and have since had some of the greatest times of my life. I'm married now, to the most wonderful man I have ever met and I am terribly happy. But the struggle still continues. I still fight to get myself up some days. I still battle the urge to pull my hair. But I am winning and that is all that matters. At least to me.
Why did I feel the need to share all of this with you? I'm not entirely sure, other than I know I was deeply inspired by that blog post and maybe there is someone out there who struggles with these same issues and just needs to know they are not alone. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that we are not as unique as we think we are. There is always ALWAYS at least one other person, if not more, in this world who has gone through what you are going through. No matter how rare. Now, our combinations of situations might be different but there is always ALWAYS ALWAYS someone who knows what you are going through. No matter if you are Christian or not, you are never alone. Whether you want to take that to mean some other person, or the Lord, you are never alone. Personally, I deeply believe in Christ and know that Heavenly Father is just that, my Heavenly Father and that he knows, loves, and cares about me. And that knowledge has gotten me through so much.
So, if this blog post serves no other reason than to let someone else know that they are not alone in this trial, that is reason enough for me to divulge some of my deepest, most personal, and embarrassing secrets.
I hope I haven't rambled too much, and I hope you don't see me any differently than you had before. I'm not crazy, I am not disgusting, and I am not a slacker. I am just me and I am grateful for that.
Less Than Three,
Sarah
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