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:: Saturday, June 26, 2004 ::

Yes, it's been a long while since I updated.

I'm going to try and be more current with this. It is really a great source of relaxation for me - the reason it's been so lacking is due to a dual issue of not having enough time and the fact my computer is both painfully slow and located in an extremely hot, unventilated attic. My heat asthma dehabilitates me within 5 minutes of remaining up there, and it takes my computer that long to start up.

Things that have changed?

A fight with my mom brought me to a rather lasting realization that we just can't live together anymore. She wants her privacy, and, well, the house is hers. My own feelings about her entire lifespan of poor choices, child rearing, housekeeping, and misc wealth of mistakes notwithstanding, she has a legal right to her house. It spurred Joey and I to go on an exhausting, now month-long and completely fruitless search for an apartment.

Every single complex is systematically removed from possibility by the fact we either don't make enough money, or our credit doesn't stand up to their various tests. There has been endless frustration, tears, and a total lack of proper amounts of sleep due to the fact this entire fucking state has absolutely no concept that sometimes people in their early twenties are not independently wealthy and nor are their parents. I have no idea what the hell we're going to do.

Joey and I are alright, though stress has caused something of a space between us, due to just plain fatigue. I would like to think our relationship is whole and intact, and that, a month from our anniversary now, we are as much in love as ever. I only pray he feels the same.

Not surprisingly my trichotillomania (and trichophagy) is back with a vengence. For the unenlightened, trich is a stress disorder (in my case, post-traumatic stress due to my train accident junior year of high school when I fell off a moving train and cracked my skull open - no, I didn't sue - by the time I'd recovered, the 90 day limitation on declaring intent to sue a public entity - namely, NJ Transit - had passed, and four lawyers said the exact same thing, that I had no chance or case) that forces people compulsively, to varying degrees, to pull, twist, yank, or scratch their hair out. Mine is so severe that if anyone tries to stop me mid-act, I have struck them, and if my hands are held down, I will panic violently and cry. I have the trichophagy version of Trich, which means that I ingest (eat) the hair, a dangerous (and disgusting, believe me, I wish I had another compulsion) thing because the body cannot digest hair, which can (but thank god hasn't yet) result in intestinal snarls and complications.

WebMD puts it thusly:
Trichotillomania is an impulse control disorder characterized by an overwhelming urge to pull out one's own hair, often resulting in patches of baldness. The hair on the scalp is most often affected. The eyelashes, eyebrows, and beard are also affected often. In some cases, affected individuals chew and/or swallow (ingest) the hair they have pulled out (trichophagy). The exact cause of trichotillomania is unknown.

I had severe Trich when I was dating Marco (big surprise, with the stress he put me through) and in some cases it was so bad I had to wear a kerchief, like a cancer patient, to hide the extremely noticible bald spots in my normally waist-long hair. Jon, in Baltimore, would later help me through the crying jags I went through in my long recovery, when the hair that would grow back was terribly shorter, and in some cases, spiked, than the rest of my hair, thus making ponytails, or virtually any hairstyle, impossible.

My hair is thinner now, and still waist length, but now the four places on my scalp that were the most affected during my initial bout are getting as bad as they once were - open wounds so severe that the slightest tug on my uppermost hair means terrible sharp pain. Brushing my hair becomes a very delicate and occasionally bloody operation, and it is a daily struggle to try and keep myself from starting to do it again. I had finally gotten the shortest bands of hair to grow back past my chin...I feel like I'm rapidly returning to square one.

What causes it? I know someone who would probably blame themselves, but it isn't them. They are, in fact, the only thing keeping it from going into total relapse. It is a combination of getting kicked out of yet another house with no options whatsoever, and feeling that my support base, as far as family, is near nonexistent. My father barely calls anymore, and the last long conversation we had, he hinted my (unemployed) stepmother was questioning how long he would continue to pay for my college. It isn't bad enough I lost a friend when my mother remarried, I feel like I've lost a father now, too. Dad was gruff, sure, but I started attending college at his insistence, fearing that I would let him down. Now, all the struggles to remain in school later, I feel like I am defending his own ideals to him, the very ones he so violently insisted I follow in my youth. Additionally, it stings that a woman I tried to befriend, tried to act as a daughter to, even though I found it terribly awkward at times, fearing I would be seen as trying to take the place of my passed-away stepsister, a woman I thought supported me and could help me with pep talks where my own mother seemed incapable of anything except raging sarcasm, bile, and pessimism - is not in my corner after all.

I feel very lost, very small, and very scared.

~Fox

:: Fox 6/26/2004 01:51:00 PM [Say what?] ::
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