It’s been a while since I’ve written with you in mind.
I haven't fought with you nearly as much lately. I don't know if I've simply gotten used to my struggles with you, or if I've solved enough of them that I feel more at peace. It's been a year now since I discovered what plagued my hands and skin, and a year since I started blogging about it. It’s also been a year since I found a name for it: Dermatillomania. It's funny how putting a name to something and understanding the psychology of something can make it so much less threatening and so much more manageable.
You still bother me a lot sometimes. You make every glance in the mirror into a struggle. You make shower time a hassle. You make molehills look like mountains to my plagued eyes. You follow me into dressing rooms and make me feel ugly and dirty. But you don’t have the power to make me cry as much anymore, and I usually win our dressing room battles these days. I won small battles with you long enough to have a clear face for my friend’s wedding and long enough to have a smile on my face as I stood beside her as one of her bridesmaids.Then again, I've learned to smile with or without your tracks galloping across the snow of my skin.
I’ve learned that trying to crush you in one powerful blow isn’t the way to win. I’ve learned to take things moment by moment and to stop giving you the power to steal my focus so much. I really can’t explain my victories. It seemed to get better when I learned to stop giving a shit and look the world in the face with my imperfect one and declare that I needed help. I’ve never hidden you with cosmetics, but I’ve covered for you with silly excuses. Mosquito bites, cat claws, a fall, a scrape, “accidentally” scratching myself. Denial was the best makeup of all.
I have learned that I will always battle with you. But I think that if I can win while my heart and mind and time are compromised with other troubles, as they have been in the past year, I can win many more times in the future when times aren’t so hard.
You will not get in my way. And I don’t mean that in an aggressive and confrontational way. It just means that when you come knocking at my door each day, I will answer it less and less frequently. You aren’t invited to my dressing rooms and glances in the mirror. You aren’t welcome, because I’m ready for you. My mental weapons are drawn and the real ones- the bobby pins, the safety pins, the finger nails, the thumb tacks, the tweezers- are put away.
Don’t be fooled, Derma. My skin may be clear, but I haven’t forgotten the way you give me temporary false confidence when things appear good on the outside. You are still in my blood. You’re still a part of my family. You seem to have a hold on many members of my family, though they will not listen when I try to tell them it could be more than a bad habit. To them, OCD seems to be more of an excuse to continue the bad habits that they could get rid of if they just trusted their god and prayed hard enough about it.
I have no god I can pray to or trust. Yet somehow I’m winning. I wonder sometimes if the face of my struggles with you is fading along with the face of the religious oppression from my childhood. And I am happy. I don’t need a god, and I don’t need you. The difference is that I have proof of your existence. And yet, there are so few believers when I explain why I have so many scars.
But like any person of faith would say, I don’t need others to believe what I know to be true.
You exist in the mind and control heinous deeds just like a cult god.
And just like I’ve walked away as far as I can from that god, I will walk away from you.
Both will still be a part of my history. Both may creep into my mind at night and try to sway me. But both will fail as the years fade them into dust.
