Shut Up Already!

K has a big fucking mouth and she just will not shut up. God! She embarrasses us to death! She must drive everyone crazy with her ramblings. On and on. She never stops. I'm not sure which K was in charge yesterday, but I'm ashamed of her. She completely crossed the line and talked to too many people, gave out too much personal information, and even shared some of our secrets.  We, the K's, are very angry with her for this lapse in judgement.  I'm not sure who she was, but she's a talker.

Man, she would not be silenced, and she spoke quickly (according to Husband) and loudly (according to our mother) and I'm totally humiliated today.  We had a couple of friends over last night, and I'm afraid that K got on their nerves.  Now, they gave no indication that this had happened last night, I'm just assuming that if this K got on our nerves, then she got on everyone else's as well.  I'm terrified of going back through my Tweets; God only knows what all was said and to whom.  It's a sad fact that even though I seem to recall a number of different conversations, I'm not certain today who those conversations were with.  This is quite common with us, in fact it's pretty much a daily occurrence in our life.  So every morning, whomever is out and about is supposed to go back through our Tweets and text messages and emails and Facebook posts, and try and piece together what happened the day before.  This doesn't always take place--a lot of times we forget to do this.  It depends on which K is in charge. Some of us are very self-conscious and worry incessantly about what was said and done the previous day and will not relax until we've read all those pieces of information which are available to us via computer or phone or handwritten journal entries.  Some days we find that K didn't talk to anyone at all, or she just barely interacted with others, choosing to show herself only to those certain few with whom she feels comfortable and who she likes and trusts (to some degree, not completely of course).  Just today our husband told us that there are days in which we talk a great deal (like yesterday) and days in which we stay quiet and hardly talk at all.  He knows now that these are different K's, and he's come to accept that.  He even admitted to me this morning that he very much likes the one he calls Switch Kellie, the one who first showed herself to him for a week back in January.  It seems to me that Dr. H, our psychiatrist, got to meet her too.  I really can't remember.  I suppose I should take the time everyday to re-read all the blog posts and journal entries so that I know exactly where we stand, mentally speaking, and so that we have knowledge of our prior behavior and activities.  But I've come to realize within the past 24 hours that I have a good many blog entries at this point, or at least more than I have time to read over again everyday.  Time is short, especially when you are someone who tends to lose time on a regular basis, and so we can't afford to spend too much of it refreshing our memory of the past several months.  We just have to check our day-to-day activities and interactions, and hope for the best, i.e. hope that we don't say something inappropriate or ask a stupid question (again) or in any way give away the secret that we actually don't remember much of anything that happened to us the day or night before.  Hell, we can't even remember what happened to us a few hours ago, much less days or months ago.  So everyday is like a crap shoot for us...We have to decide which blog posts to read, how many texts and Tweets to go back through, and how far back in our journal to explore, and all of these decisions will, in the end, affect our ability to carry on conversations with Tweeps or friends which make sense and follow the proper timeline. Since K has no concept of time, she usually can't recall when something happened to her, even if it happened that very morning or sometimes even in the past half hour.  I can't stress enough how frustrating this is, not just to K, but to all those parties involved.  K always ends up looking foolish, but she tries to play it off by just pretending that she'd been drunk or drugged at the time.  That's her fall-back excuse: that she was too impaired to remember things properly.  And the thing is, most of the time it works.  Most people really do believe that her forgetfulness is caused by pot-smoking or alcohol or all those pills K has to ingest every day.  We worry that our friends will figure out our secret at some point, hell I guess some of them have already figured it out by this time... I guess our memory loss is severe enough to be quite noticeable to everyone who's around us frequently.  I wonder what they think about that. I wonder if they think K is an idiot.  Or just a stupid pothead. 

Here's a good example of how easily we forget things: I am unable to remember what this blog post is about. I can't recall what I've just typed, and can't remember unless I scroll back up to the beginning and read it all over again.  I hesitate to do that, as it not only makes the perfectionist within us go crazy and try to correct each and every little mistake and we could end up spending hours rewriting this whole blog entry, but it also breaks the stream of consciousness which I like to just let go of and see where it leads us.  So I'm stuck now, stuck here in this situation in which I can't remember what I was talking about, but I don't really have time to find out, and so I'll just flounder and  flail about and try to compose some sort of blog post which has an understandable point and which all ties in together somehow.  I know, in my heart, that this is not going to happen.  I know that I will repeat myself, not just today and tonight but probably in this post alone, and that I do so all the time.  All the time.  Sigh. So much wasted time. So many lost memories.  Some of which we're glad to be rid of, others which could really help us in our recovery process if only we'd remember them.  It could be that every time K goes to therapy, she starts all over again, from the beginning, with her therapist. 

 I'm having a memory clip play in my mind right now, and it's showing me my doctor, and she's explaining to us that we've discussed these things before, whatever these things may be. I can see her looking at us, with this look in her eye, that says "I've told you this a hundred times".  I wonder if she and I are making any progress at all in K's treatment.  I wonder if she'll decide I'm too difficult to treat and just give up on me ever getting better, and dump us as a patient.  Our last therapist dumped us for forgetting too many appointments.  What if this doctor does the same thing? What if we get dropped again, and any progress which has been made is lost, and we must once again go to a new doctor, and spend the approximate 2 years it always takes for them to get an idea of what's really wrong with us? This would be a tragedy.  I don't know what makes me think this, but I have an idea that we, the K's, have gone further in our therapy with this current psychiatrist than we've ever come with any one prior to her.  We are learning, we are taking steps toward healing. We've made some progress.  I know this because I read some of our journal and some of our blog and I found that we're starting to remember things from our childhood.  Now K is absolutely terrified at the thought of having total recall of her childhood trauma(s).  She's not sure that she wants to remember, but some people (we can't remember who now) have told us that we can't truly heal unless we face our fears head-on.  So in order to get better, we have to see what all the fuss is about-we have to relive the horror that must've taken place at about age 4 (we've gleaned this information from the memories we've recovered and from old diary entries).

Shit.  I just paused to take a drink of water and I've once again lost my place and have no idea what I was talking about.  I don't want to read this post again. Maybe I should just shut the hell up.  Maybe I've said a whole lot of nothing.  I wouldn't be surprised at that. Not at all.  If only our brain would stay on track for more than just minutes at a time!  If only we could focus long and hard enough to finish a blog post!  Have any of our previous blog posts made sense or had a message?  Has this entire blog been a huge waste of my time, and yours, the reader's?  I shall stop now, for the shame and embarrassment is overtaking me at this point.  I'll just go take a pill and try and forget my humiliation.  It just popped into my mind that I could have blog posts which look and sound pretty much exactly like this one... now wouldn't that be funny and sad at the same time?  All I can really remember right now is that yesterday there was a K here who had a big mouth and wouldn't stop talking and spilled the beans to just about anyone and everyone and now, today, right now, the K that's doing the typing of this post is completely humiliated and feels as though everyone out there in the cyber world is laughing at us.  Are you laughing at us?  Do all of you make fun of us all the time?  Am I the laughing stock of Twitter?  Or is this just K's paranoia taking control of our mind and twisting things around so that K looks like a failure at everything she's attempted to do with this blog?  What was this blog post about again? Oh yes. One more thing, before I forget (HAHA!), I'd like to apologize to all those Tweeps with whom I had interactions yesterday and last night and even early this morning. I'm very sorry that I talked your ears off.  I'm sorry that I was a nuisance.  I'm sorry if I bothered you, or if I've been bothering you for quite some time now.  I really can't remember what's been happening since...well, I don't know.  I just can't remember.

The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation, Part II

(This is going to be a very difficult post to write; I've never confessed these things to anyone. I'm completely humiliated and ashamed and embarrassed to death to admit these things out loud, but I feel it's important to speak out. Perhaps I can help someone else.)

In the first half of this post (The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation: Part I), I described how I began cutting at the age of 13.  I was always very careful with my routine, never daring to nick an artery or something that could cause a trip to the hospital, as that would reveal my secret.  I was a cutter throughout my teens and into my 20's, but then I took a break for several years and didn't cut. I turned to tattoos and body piercings as a substitute.  I told myself I was better, that I'd outgrown such behavior. That was a lie. I started cutting again on my 30th birthday.  But this post isn't about cutting, it's about self-injury, which comes in many forms.  I didn't need a razor blade to harm myself.  In fact, the self-injury actually began many years before I picked up a knife and made my first cuts.  This post is about my main form of self-mutilation.

I've suffered in silence since the age of 9 from a disorder whose name I never knew until two months ago.  This particular disorder is actually visible to others, in a tangible, physical way, or at least its symptoms are; it's much harder to hide than say Bipolar Disorder.  It's something I've misunderstood and been ashamed of and hidden from family and friends, and my doctors as well, all these years, for almost my entire life. Dermatillomania is an impulse control disorder characterized by the repeated urge to pick at one's own skin, often ending in bloody wounds and causing tissue damage severe enough to leave scars.  The urge to pick-or scratch, bite, tweeze, or squeeze- is similar to an obsessive compulsive disorder, but for some people the condition is more akin to substance abuse; I haven't yet figured out which one of those two groups I am in.  The activity causes great anticipation in me before I engage in the behavior (as with substance abuse), and while I'm doing it I feel a tremendous sense of anxiety relief (as with OCD).  Plus, 79% of patients, including myself,  report feeling a pleasurable sensation while picking.

My first memories of picking at my skin were in 4th grade, and it was on my face of all places.  There was no way to hide it. I can remember staring into the mirror and seeing all these flaws on my face, all sorts of imperfections.  Well, we, the K's, cannot tolerate imperfections, especially when we can alter the appearance of the flaw and hopefully remove it altogether. (This thinking stems from my Body Dysmorphic Disorder) So I began to squeeze any little bump I thought I saw on my face.  Then I mashed some pores on my nose that seemed dirty.  This led to my scratching at a mole on the side of my cheek. And so on and so forth...worse and worse every day. One day I was feeling sick at school and the teacher sent me to the nurse, and she looked at my face and decided I had chicken pox and so I got to go home that day.  I was too embarrassed to tell her that I'd created those angry red spots myself.  To this day,I find the subject completely humiliating and I hesitate to write about these things here, but when I started this blog, I said I was going to be honest, and so here we go.

How did my parents not notice?  Well, they did notice, but I pretended that it was just acne.  Puberty came early for me and so it wasn't hard for them to believe the lie.  As the years went on, I honed my skills and began using implements, not just my fingernails, to pick.  Tweezers were, and still are, my "weapon of choice", but at different times I have used scissors, nail files, needles, safety pins, and nail clippers, plus weird little things here and there, such as a paper clip or a thumb tack.  Anything I can use to remove the perceived imperfection, which apparently only I could see.  That's the thing which kills me, the fact that no one else can see all those blackheads on my face, or all those pimples, enlarged pores, scars, or ingrown hairs.  That was what I saw when I looked in the mirror.  I saw something flawed, something ugly.  I started wearing my hair in my face, but then in junior high I discovered that I could have just as much fun-yes, FUN-picking at the skin on my arms as I could my face, and no one would be able to see it.  That was a real turning point for me, when I moved from my face down to my body.  It was easy to wear long-sleeves and keep my skin covered, and since I quit picking at my face, my skin cleared up and I actually had a very nice complexion.  It's ironic, that everybody in 4th grade thought I had acne and teased me, but once I was in high school and everybody else had acne, I had smooth skin. (We never teased anyone with acne-one of the K's wants me to tell you that.) I'm not sure if my skin-picking was a precursor for my cutting. I just know that my cutting and my skin-picking coincided beginning in 7th grade and lasting until I was in my 20's.  I'd cut and cut, then take great pleasure in picking at the scabs from the cutting. I loved seeing how many times I could make the same wound bleed.  We'd go through phases of terrible picking, and then we'd stop for awhile, and let our skin heal.  Often we'd just move to a different part of our body to pick while the first area healed; the cutting was random and could occur anywhere on us. Try to imagine how horrible this looked-my body covered in rows of razor blade cuts on my thighs and upper arms, and then surrounding the cuts were open wounds, all shapes and sizes, all over my body from the chest down.  The only part of my body that didn't get cut or picked at was my hands, but even they were subject to abuse-I bit my fingernails down to the quick, I tore at my cuticles, and I chewed the skin all around my nails, resulting in horribly ugly hands which I mostly kept in my pockets.  It wasn't until my mid-20's that I was able to control chewing on my hands, and my nails finally grew out and I kept them manicured and no one would ever guess that I'd been a nail-biter for so long.  That was the same time I gave up my cutting and skin-picking for several years, and I actually had nice skin with no bloody wounds or scabs. I was modeling then, so it was important to keep my compulsions in check, but God it was hard to do.  I was only able to maintain this smooth, clear skin for those few years in my mid-20's; I was cutting and picking again by the time I turned 30.  And this time, I had a new favorite area to pick at-my lips.  Yes, I'd bite and tug at and peel the skin from my lips until they were raw and bloody. To this day, I cannot keep my fingers away from my bottom lip. It's a compulsion which my husband tries to help me control; if he sees me chewing on my lips he'll tell me to stop.  He also polices me when I shave my legs or pluck my eyebrows, as he knows how these activities can easily trigger me and lead to my either cutting or picking.

                                          
I have these episodes in which I lose time and stop thinking about anything other than the imperfections on my skin.  I can go into the bathroom, and won't emerge for hours, literally.  Some days, I have shorter picking sessions scattered throughout the day and night, but a lot of times I go into my bathroom, lock the door, and get lost in the mirror.  I have lost entire days like this (when I lived alone of course) and I always feel the same way when it's over=baffled.  I usually don't remember what I was doing, and I can't believe I was in the bathroom for such a long period of time.  I will look down at my body and be shocked to find bleeding, open wounds scattered all over my arms, shoulders, legs, chest, and sometimes even my breasts.  God this is embarrassing.  But I want you to understand that this compulsion is something that certain people deal with. This is a real disorder.

Approximately 2% of the population has this disorder.  It's considered a similar condition to and is often comorbid with Trichotillomania, where persons pull out their hair, and is as difficult to treat. Thank God I don't pull out my hair.  Treatment for Dermatillomania include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and prescriptions for SSRI's.  I do take medication which helps me, but I've never sought therapy for my disorder because I'm just too ashamed and embarrassed to admit to my psych doctor that I have this problem.  She knows I self-harm, she just doesn't know to what extent.  Dermatillomania causes intense feelings of guilt, shame, and embarrassment, and this increases the likelihood of self-injury. Suicide attempts occur in approximately 12% of patients with this condition.

 And I have to interject this now--The Kellie is really very angry that we are divulging this information to anyone, let alone The Public. The Kellie has a diva's reputation to uphold.  The Kellie is NOT a compulsive picker.  She has soft, smooth porcelain skin which she works hard to maintain.  She can't look at us when we're covered in sores and scabs; she is disgusted by us.  I'm fairly certain that anyone would find us disgusting.  I mean, this is a really gross habit.  No, not habit, compulsion.  I am powerless to stop this behavior.  In fact, I usually don't even realize I'm doing the picking.  I lose time, a lot of it, and I become absorbed in the activity, and it's as though someone else is driving the car, so to speak, and I don't have true awareness of this...not really.  I see the aftermath.  I see the bleeding, gaping holes in my flesh, the peeling skin, the nasty scabs, and of course the scars.

Recently, as in two weeks ago, I had to go see a medical doctor because the self-harm had gotten so out of hand that my wounded legs would NOT heal, and I feared I was getting infected.  I was totally humiliated to show him the dozen or so large (3 inch x 2 inch) sores on my calves.  They were all bloody and scabby and it was obvious I'd been picking at them as early as that very morning.  He was very understanding and did not embarrass me.  He gave me a steroid cream and said it should clear up my skin in 3 weeks.  So far, I've got the same large wounds, only now they're all dry and cracked and peeling.  It is my belief that the scars from these particular self-inflicted wounds will be the worst ones I've ever acquired, and will probably result in me never again being able to wear shorts or dresses. Sigh. (Last Summer I wore short dresses and told everyone the sores on my legs were just mosquito bites, but that excuse won't cut it this year)

I don't want to make myself ugly, really I don't.  But this is my fate.  I've gotten much better about the cutting, and only do it in times of extreme stress, but the picking is harder to control. I can stick my hand in my sleeve and pick at my arm right in front of someone and they'd never know. And I do.  Thankfully it's Winter now, so it doesn't seem odd that I'm all covered up.  But I worry about Spring and Summer...I have a whole new group of friends now that I've gotten married, and I do NOT want any of them to find out about this.  My big fear is being invited to a pool party. I can stop picking long enough to heal for special events (I wore a sleeveless wedding dress) but I can't stop altogether and it's impossible to predict when some skin might be visible.  I worry constantly about my secret being exposed.  Sometimes, I'm still asked to model, and whether or not I take the job has to do with which areas of my body will be seen.  I had to turn down 2 jobs in the past few months because my arms were too scabby.  I don't know if this condition will ever be under control. I fear that I'll have to deal with this for the rest of my life.  Man, that's a hell of a lot of scars.