#chimneylove

We see how bright you burn

We see how brave you’ve been

Now see yourself in turn

You’re the real gift kid, let us in!

Open your eyes. What do you see?

I see… me.

All of me.

Almost everyone has stories their families tell about their childhood that we would rather they didn’t. Embarrassing photos of us as babies, dumb ideas we had that led to injury, and just the silly ways we pronounced certain words. It’s embarrassing, but endearing in a way, because at least we know our families are remembering us as children fondly.

One of the main things my family never let me forget was something that, in hindsight, should have raised some red flags. Nothing bad my family did. But rather foreshadowing for something I wouldn’t have a name for until over 20 years later.

When I was a small child, I did something rather unbecoming for a young girl growing up in the Bible Belt on a farm. I put my bare foot up on the dining room table of my grandparents house, near my granny’s face, and asked her to pick a piece of skin off my foot that I couldn’t get myself.

Now this is, obviously, gross. And even knowing what I know about myself now, I see that. But it also spoke volumes about what this small child was fixated on. I didn’t learn until I was in my late teens/early twenties that what had been going on with me for my entire working memory with my skin had a name.

Excoriation Disorder. Also known as Dermatillomania, or skin picking disorder. This is a “psychological condition that manifests as repetitive, compulsive skin picking.

Now many of us can say we’ve accidentally scratched open a scab. Or plucked at a spot where a zit is forming and irritating the skin there. But Excoriation Disorder, or as I’ll be referring to it as from here as ED, is not nearly as benign as that. At least, not for me.

The rather unsettling picture attached to this post is my foot at this point in time. And it is almost always in this state, or healing from it. The last time I can confidently say my feet were not in a state of severe damage was when I got a pedicure for my sister’s wedding in 2015. I do pick at other places on my body. My fingers, certain spots on my arms and legs. My scalp also gets pretty rough treatment from me. But my feet have almost always taken the brunt. I remember countless occasions where I would be sitting anywhere, with friends, alone, driving, working, playing, and I would be ripping into my own skin. To the point of blood and moderate pain and sensitivity for days or weeks afterwards. Sometimes it would be triggered by stress or anxiety. Sometimes boredom. Sometime I would find something small, a minor discoloring of a speck of skin, or a scar, or a bump from a bug bite, or acne, maybe a scab from a pet playing too rough. Or just from being a child and getting the scrapes and bumps that help you learn how to move and grow. But if I found it on my body, it needed to be removed. However it could. Whether I could pick it off with my fingers, or tweezers, or a pin, or a knife. It needed to get off of me. I wouldn’t even notice I was doing it half of the time. I still don’t. On bad mental health days I’ve woken up many a night with my fingernails digging into my scalp, picking off scabs, or pieces of dry skin. Eventually the skin begins to heal but then it is a new scar that will never fully be repaired because the cycle of picking starts all over again.

ED is classified under OCD and other related disorders. Less than 2 percent of the total population is affected by it. And in that percentage, 75 percent is women.

I’ve had people tell me about myself and my issues with picking my entire life. I’ve been called gross, disgusting, foul, and dirty, by adults who were supposed to be helping me. I’ve had people tell me I’m not trying hard enough to stop my picking. I’ve lived with this my whole life, and coping with it as healthily as I can. So to have people in a position of power over me still try to tell me about myself in this respect infuriates me deep down in my core.

I am an adult. I am an adult with many co-morbid conditions. ADHD, anxiety, depression, migraines, autism, and ED, to name some. I’ve worked my entire life working towards the place I am now. And to have someone who is supposed to be a mentor or guide to tell me I’m not doing enough to control it is an insult to my journey to this point. It isn’t helpful. Not when it isn’t coming from a place of concern, but rather, condescension. A person who has decided they know more about me than I know about myself and that I can’t properly dissect my own self in any way. I refuse to let this voice tell me I can’t define myself. I know who I am and what my hard limits are. Better than anyone else.

This ramble comes from a place of frustration but also determination. I am determined to become the best version of myself. No matter how long it takes, and what happens along the way will be a small piece of the puzzle of my life.

I also want people out there who may stumble across this post and feel a kinship with my struggles to know that they aren’t alone.

You can do this. If you know yourself, don’t let anyone try to explain your brain to you because they think you are too naive to do it for yourself. You Can do it for yourself. You’ve been doing it for yourself this whole time. Whether you’ve done it with support, or on your own. You’ve done it. And knowing that something is a part of you doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, or that it makes you wrong by default just because you accept a part of yourself that isn’t perfect. It also doesn’t mean you want to keep doing it. Or that you don’t want to get better. All it means is that you are being honest with yourself. And to me personally, that’s the best thing you can do for yourself. Let the good bring you higher, and let the bad teach you how to grow. It’s okay.

Having a atypical brain does not define you. Having ED doesn’t define you. The only one who can define you is you. Don’t let others try to convince you otherwise. But you can accept that it is a part of you. A part of your story. Whether that part is over or not, it’s still integral to your character and where you are today. And you get to hold the power over the script.

‘Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbow’d.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.’

^Invictus- by William Ernest Henley

Source:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/dermatillomania-skin-picking%3famp