This chapter contains massive trigger warnings for self-harm and trich. Please bare this mind before reading on. If uncomfortable, please feel free to skip over this chapter- Alice (Author)659Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZxUD4BF2mI
I had always struggled with the way I looked. I was never asked out on dates because I was deemed to be too ugly and short. When I found out during my high school days that one of my closet friends had been self-harming, I was generally shocked. Why didn't she come to me and open up her true feelings? As I soon learnt, we all have our secret struggles which trying to open up about is the hardest. You feel scared about other reactions by loved ones.659Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRS3Ppsig30
She was truly scared, I could sense that within her eyes. School life for her had never looked so hard and I saw a lot of her within me. I didn't self-harm during school days but I started after I left high school. All for one reason: Nobody liked my face. No-one. I was so babyish and spot-prone that most of the time walking around, I faced constantly the nasty taunts and giggles/whispers that come with all of the aspects of bullying. I hated how fat they looked, getting them shaped had happened but that wasn't a recent fix.
As time went on and I grew more and more unsettled, I turned to my eyebrows as an easy way to deal with the trauma and pain. It started off slowly, one hair everyday. Then, it turned to two hairs everyday and then five hairs everyday from both sides of my eyebrows. Before long, I experienced a massive panic attack and as a result, I pulled out all of my hairs and was left bald and distraught.
I had to wear heavy make-up for years to cover up the damage, the whispers continued, the various love interests I had suddenly used to make my life a miserable experience. I lost a huge part of me and refused to apply for jobs or go out with family. That was always the first topic for conversation.
"Hey Alice, why your eyebrows black?"
It was a nightmare, a living, walking nightmare with no sign of it settling down. When I finally got some therapy aged eighteen, it was again bought up during a meeting and I had to say why I was doing it. Why? I hated myself, I hated myself so goddamn much and I was too scared to use a razor to physically cut myself, like a few others I knew in my personal life had done. That was the moment that I heard the really long name for this condition for the first time. Trichotillomania.
Trich for short, it's an impulse a person can experience in which they want to self-harm and end up pulling out body hair. Whether it would be scalp hair, arm hair or in my case, eyebrow hair, it's a very difficult thing to just snap out of quickly. This time last year, I was completely bald for the third time and feeling depressed and alone. As the summer went on, I found myself in a spell of... I like to know it as a breather. I was having a breather and didn't touch my eyebrow hair for over three months.
Currently, I'm in an active spell. In which I will say now at the time of writing this, I'm still picking off my eyebrow hairs and having odd bald patches that I try and hide using my thick glasses and winter hat. I haven't had to go back to the make-up yet but it would be distressing if I did, knowing that all of the past bullying experiences would come back to haunt me.
I know virtually no-one who openly has trich. I've told my boyfriend about it and obviously, I'm telling you guys now. But letting my family know has been a different story. I've said that my hair fell out due to stress but I know for certain that it was my picking actions and not stress that caused the hairs to go. I listened to an audiobook last year called Almost Adulting and the author Arden opened up about her trich struggles. You can pretty much imagine how relieved I was, as I thought for sure that I was the only person in the world who had trich.
Various triggers I have involve stares from other people, certain words, harsh tones of voice, doing something so simple like washing up for example wrong. Not being at a certain place on time. It's tricky to open up about this and in the past, I've written that it was fate alone that caused this. It wasn't. It was all me.
I still hate myself, I still hate the way I look. I still hate my eyebrows. I do try to make it hard for me to pull of hairs. Like putting on some strong cream, making my skin wet and sticky and technically harder for me to pull. But sadly, that old method that used to help isn't helping me at the moment. I'll say now that I've always wanted to write a story about a character who has trich and she's experiencing a lot of backlash but always keeps dreams close to her heart.
Many writers have told me that a memoir outset is better for trich. I'd say no. Yes, it's good to be open and honest about real-life things. But it's personal, readers like to find good characters to connect to and learn who they are and what they do. Memoirs are non-fiction texts told from a real person's POV. Fiction can be inspired by true events from the writer's life. It's up to them how to bring the story together. That's one reason why I like to write.
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