On Trichotillomania (content warning: mental illness)

Pluck, pluck, pluck. My fingers dry as can be, cracked shriveled skin. They move towards my eyes. My eyelashes, rough and short because I plucked so many of them out and they are not growing back the way I want them to. Damn it, I think, they are so short. I can’t pluck them. When I pluck, I feel tension, like someone is tugging at my eyelashes and then when the hair separates from the follicle in one fell swoop, I fell a weird release of tension, the same kind of tension one night release when they take a breath of fresh air. It is painful and my eyelashes are so short but I can’t stop no matter how hard I try. I pluck when I do anything: sitting, watching, television, eating Fritos, writing a blog post, catching zzzzs and failing. I wish there was some magic trich fairy that could make trichotillomania disappear.

My mom knocks on my door.

“Come in,” I yell as P!nk blasts through my stereos.

She walks in.

“Are you coming for dinner?”

I stare at the computer. The red beanie cap covers my newly plucked scalp. I mutter a laconic “mmmm-hmmm” and keep staring at the computer. Please don’t ask me about this dumb trich, I plead to God, Buddha, the Universe, or whoever is listening up there.

“Why are you wearing a hat?” she asks.

I quickly shake my head.

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s not nothing, Miranda.”

She walks closer. Then she removes my cap and gasps when she sees the plethora of hairs I have pulled from my scalp over the past couple of months.

“Dr. Steinberg told you to not pull for at least a few months!”

“I know, I know…” I mutter. “But…”

“But what?”

“I can’t stop, Mom, okay? It’s just something that I have, ok? I cannot get rid of it, I have done everything.”

“So the Zoloft didn’t work wonders for you, eh?”

“No, the Zoloft was fine, Mom, I’m not saying that. It’s just…it will take me a while to recover from this habit, that’s all.”

She rolls her eyes towards the ceiling.

“Dear God, we have been through this so many times,” she mutters, her eyes closed.

She is clearly exasperated with me and I am starting to become exasperated with her. Unconsciously, my index finger and thumb make their way to my eyelashes…

My mom slaps my hand away from my eyes.

“Mom!”

She pauses.

“I’m sorry, but this has been going on for too long.” She sighs and shakes her head. Before she leaves my room, she calls, “Wash your hands for dinner.”

I pause, then take a shaky breath. It’s ok, don’t take it personally. You will overcome this, I think. I know I will. Just get me through these dumb stressful teenage years and it will just go away.

Tears form in my eyes and my bottom lip trembles. I cover my tear-stained face with my right hand and lower my head to my desk my body heaving each time I break down. I gasp for breath and choke out sobs. I feel like a total failure. Mom and Dad sent me to a therapist and the therapist gave me medication, and it worked, so why the hell am I still plucking?

The next day I go to school wearing the same beanie. A skinny young woman wearing a red flannel long-sleeved shirt, a black skirt and clunky Doc Martens walks down the hall, only something catches my eye. She is wearing a beanie, too, except it’s a navy blue one. And it looks like her eyelashes and eyebrows might have bald spots, too… I realize then: I’m not the only one with this problem.

The girl pauses to take a drink at the fountain. Madison Hart and her friends turn and look at the girl wearing the blue beanie and start giggling.

“Why is she wearing a hat inside?”

“Maybe she has lice.”

“Maybe she is bald.”

They all gasp and giggle at each other’s jokes. I am really sad that this girl is being teased. She continues to walk down the hall, quicker this time, and out of the corner of her eye I see a tear fall. I hope I get to see this girl at some point during the day. I wonder if she has friends.

Lunchtime comes, and I stand in the cafeteria line. The hot piping smell of fresh calzones and steamed broccoli wafts up to my nostrils. I hear the sizzling of canola oil as the greasy smell of French fries tantalizes my taste buds. I feel a tingle, then a twitch, then that impulse to pull gnaws at me as I anxiously look at the fifteen other students in line. I am too embarrassed and shy to speak to anyone. I close my eyes against the cacophony of high school freshmen chattering and someone at the table nearest the lunch line blasting Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” from their iPhone. I take a deep breath. Please don’t pull, please don’t pull….

Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Within milliseconds my fingers are fondling my eyelashes. Ugh, they are so ugly, I just need to pull them out so that when I look in the mirror I don’t have to look at how ugly these short eyelashes are. I don’t want to do this now, not with people watching. People are going to laugh at me if I do this.

My stomach lets out an impatient growl. Hurry up already, it screams. But the urge to get rid of this super-short eyelash is screaming even louder, drowning out the cries of my hunger. I make my way out of the lunch line, losing my place within 5 minutes of approaching the mecca of food. The cacophony glides behind me and then falls from a crescendo into a muddled whisper as I am now in the quiet of the girls’ bathroom stall. I dig out my compact mirror from my purse and wipe off the smudges on the surface. I take a good hard look at my eyes, putting the mirror closer to my eyelids so I could know which hairs needed to go. I found my right hand fumble towards my chin. Ugh, there is hair on that, too. There are bald spots where I pulled the hairs out from last week. They look dry, scaly and frankly unattractive. Long rivers of tears fall down my cheek and kiss each of these bald spots. I don’t want to pull that curly one, I know it will hurt, but it’s so damned crooked and it stands out. I sigh. I am losing this painful battle and it hurts to admit that I have done everything I could and am still doing this to myself. Don’t I want to be pretty? Don’t I want to have beautiful long curling eyelashes softer than the softest pillow? I give in to temptation, and tug at the lonely short crooked hair that belonged on my chin. It doesn’t give at first but I keep tugging it. Fuck it, I just want some release, just want to release the tension in my fingers, in my body, in my life.

The hair comes loose and I rub it around with my fingers and let it rest on my tongue. Then I don’t feel good about swallowing hair so I just flick it off my fingers and let it fall to the linoleum floor and land somewhere it can find peace.

I unlock the bathroom stall, feeling relieved, anxious, ashamed and alone. But my breath catches when I see no one other than the blue-beanie girl peering in the big long mirror plucking away at her eyebrows using nothing other than her long fingers. I stop dead in my tracks. She continues to pull, a lonely expression on her face.

“Hey…” I shyly say.

She doesn’t reply. She just continues to look in the mirror silently and with a pained expression on her face. She gathers her brown leather messenger bag and before leaving, give me a blank indifferent look and leaves the restroom, the cold metal red door slamming behind her. The dim lights flicker and a cockroach crawls from under the sink. It darts towards a crack in the wall and disappears. I stand all alone.