Dermatillomania, that is. I'm stopping. I'm going to force myself to stop. No matter how painful and stressful and horrible it is going to be to do so, it needs to stop.
One month before my eleventh birthday - actually, it was exactly eight years ago today - my parents got divorced. Along with the crippling mental illness that ensued came the beginnings of acne (which may also have to do with the first hints of puberty). I was the only person in my class, and in fact my entire school, who had acne. My mom had just moved out abruptly and my brother was locking himself in his room for days at a time and I spent a lot of my time locked in my room as well, crying and crying and staring in the mirror at my stupid crying blemished face, and then I just began digging my nails into it. I had nothing but fragments of family left at home, and at school everybody started to avoid me because of the scabs on my nose and forehead resulting from hours of time spent in front of the mirror pawing at my face until it bled. I just wanted my stupid ugly zits to go away. I thought if I just tore at them enough they would go away.
And now eight years later, this compulsion has spread from my face to my arms and shoulders and back and hips and neck and stomach and chest. Over almost my entire body, I am covered with small circular scars. I hate looking at my body in the mirror, and it has nothing to do with weight or whatever else it is most women dislike in the mirror. It has all to do with these horrible blotched scars covering me. And it makes me so angry at myself that I begin to pick at them more, because a part of me still believes that if I can just pick at them enough, they will go away.
Whenever I get an itch, instead of scratching it, I find a blemish I've created somewhere around the area and pick it open. If there isn't one, I find a pore and dig my fingernails into it.
There have been dozens, if not hundreds of nights where I have crawled into bed around 11pm hoping to get a relatively early night, and then start tearing at my skin, and when I look at the clock it's far past midnight.
For a period about a year ago, I would run my razor over areas of my body where there wasn't any hair, just so that I could get razorburn, so that I would have something to pick at. That's why my stomach has scars on it.
A few years ago, I cut my nails short in an attempt to stop. The next day I stole the family pair of tweezers so that I could use them to keep damaging my skin.
I haven't worn a bathing suit since I was eleven because I don't want anybody to see my back. Nor have I worn a tank top because the tops of my arms and shoulders are covered with wounds and scars.
I very rarely wear white shirts, because they get blood stains on them.
I realise that all of this is really disgusting to think about. It's really, really, really disgusting, and if I didn't trust Oscar so much to love me unconditionally I would never make this post because there have been a lot of times when I have convinced myself that nobody would ever want or love a person with such a disgusting habit and such a disgusting body.
I'm stopping now. This is it. Tomorrow afternoon I am cutting my nails short, going to the store to buy scar remover, and purchasing band-aids so that if I have an urge to pick at my skin it won't be able to be fulfilled instantaneously and I'll have time to convince myself not to. I'm going to stop this. I'm going to do whatever it takes to stop this. I have allowed myself to destroy so much of my self-esteem, confidence, hope, and body for some of the years when I needed it most. And it ends now. This illness is not going to eat away at my life. It ends now.
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