After trying so hard not to, I break down anyway.

I pray anyone who reads will take my words and apply any to their lives that seem suitable...in the hopes that I may help them while I try to help myself...

 

Once upon a time....

I had gold and olive skin that was near flawless. (And a self-inflicted mullet).

 

It stayed this way for many years...

In middle school, anytime I got sores, I would have fun taking the scabs off. It was nothing serious. Just something little kids did, so I thought. I didn't think anything of it...until one day when my gym teacher approached me and asked me why I had so many scars and scabs and questioned whether or not my parents were abusing me. They weren't. I got scared and stopped messing with my skin for a while because I didn't want my parents to get in trouble for something they hadn't done. And I left it alone for a long time.

Until the summer before senior year, when I started developing anxiety issues, began to struggle with the faith I'd been brought up in, and got my heart broken for the first time. I picked at my skin when I was sad, when I was angry, when I was bored....but even then, I was still good at hiding it and leaving it alone if I really had to. For example, I was able to let myself heal for my senior pictures with relative ease.

But with the onset of senior stress, my inner battle with rejecting my parents' religion, and having my first love find someone new, things got much worse than I'd ever seen them. So bad, that I avoided the camera and have no pictures to really show of it. I never had makeup around to cover myself, so if I did take pictures, I edited them to perfection by lightening them like this to hide any scarring I could:


After senior year, I met a wonderful man, went off to college, and my "stress picking" (as I called it) should have gotten better. And sometimes it did. Other times, it didn't. It became an obsession. It became part of my routine. But more importantly, my mind became warped. My logic became twisted. I thought constantly removing scabs and digging at imperfections would somehow make them go away and renew my skin like virgin snow. I thought hurting myself would make me beautiful. At the same time, it wasn't about beauty. It was a feeling. I would get a stomach ache, and rather than deal with the pain, I would distract from the pain by making myself hurt and bleed other places. To the average person, this makes no sense. To my normal self, this makes no sense. But to the girl inside that takes over and hurts me, it makes all the sense in the world. To her, it's basic arithmetic: skin-scabs=good. Yet in the back of my mind I know that skin minus scab equals blood...equals scar...equals pain...and eventually equals shame.

Many times, others would dismiss it as simply a "bad habit" that I could quit at any time. My boyfriend was particularly upset by my behavior, but always tried to be supportive and loving anyhow and remind me that I was beautiful. But I didn't feel very beautiful.

During a stress management course I took during winter quarter of my sophomore year, I decided to write my final essay on the "unhealthy way I handled by stress". Which lead me to find a whole heap of information that would guide me on my way to discovering that I had a legitimate condition linked with OCD. It had a few names that I thought were ugly and abrasive, like dermatillomania, and compulsive skin picking.  I liked to simply call it "scratching". I didn't want to self-diagnose, but the articles written on it were ones I could have written myself. It was like reading a diary of my self-harm. I cried.

When spring quarter of my sophomore year arrived, I knew I had to start doing something more to help myself than simply trying to cut back little by little. I had become somewhat withdrawn and depressed, and I think my significant other could tell. First, I went to the doctor about it, who told me to cover myself with bandages and simply "stop". "You're a fine looking young girl," he said "and I'd like to see you continue to head in that direction." So would I, I thought, but you don't understand. After seeing that a basic doctor had failed to help me, I began going to counseling. At first, I went to group counseling, but no one in "group" seemed to grasp why I did what I did, though they wished me well with my healing. So I turned to individual counseling. It was there that I learned about "habit reversal training". And I was supposed to start it. But I let other things get in the way and continued to put it off. I did other things to try to help myself, though. I tried meditation (though I had trouble being consistent), a hypnosis CD (that my friend laughed all the way through listening to), and I made myself a "loving" message to place over my bathroom mirror, as I noticed that catching a glimpse at my reflection was a trigger for me. So I created this for myself:

At this point in time, I've finished two years of college successfully, been able to free myself from what I consider religious brainwashing, and spent almost two years with a wonderful man, whom I love very much though long distance has made things hard. I've recognized that I have a serious problem with being unable to stop my "scratching", and been to professionals about it, and I should be very proud. And I was for a while. But I lost that today. I'd been doing so well for almost two weeks, and I broke down anyway. With all of this success and all of the joy I should have, my wounds look worse than ever, and I shed tears over it this afternoon like never before. This is not what I want for myself.

This is me today, June 03, 2013:
Everything you see is something I did to myself. And I'm ineffably ashamed.

It is today that I hope to begin again and finally commit to the habit reversal training. And it is today that I realized that I answer to no one but myself for this. I looked in the mirror and met my own eyes, and simply thought "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
This was my answer:

I made this video for myself initially. So when I went to practice my bad behavior, I could have inspiration not to. Then I decided that simply watching myself have a glorified pity-party wasn't enough. So I threw myself into working on a blog that will allow me to watch myself grow and heal if I will allow it.

I hope to document my struggle. Not just for myself, but for others. I want to set the example and get better. I know some people may see it an feel disgusted. I know that my pictures may be graphic. And I know some people may wonder how I could ever do this to myself. My answer: Something is wrong. Very wrong. And I'm bound and determined to make it right. Because I'm in a lot of pain. Because it's hurting others to watch me do what I do. But most important of all: It's hurting me to do what I do. It's hurting my body, my self confidence, my relationship, and it's damaging my life as a whole.