it was innocuous at first.

(doesn't it always start off like that?)

my lips were just a little too chapped and

it looked bad,

so i peeled off some of the old skin.

no harm done, right?

then i started wondering if people had

been judging me for always having

such dry skin and i started

picking a little more at

my lips, fingers, and toes.

i climbed the monkey bars a lot and

my hands always had callouses and blisters.

and the next thing i knew it

didn't matter if it was old or new skin

i couldn't stop;

if there was a blister i had to get rid of

it by any means i could.

every day i'd finish whatever i was doing and

find that there was a new deep red spot

on my lips, sometimes bleeding,

a new, shallow pit in my skin where

i pulled off the old layer a bit

too early and it hurt, it hurt but

i couldn't stop and i still

can't and my mother is always sighing

and saying, stop picking already, how

many times do i have to ask you that?

but it's not that simple and

yet i kept trying and trying

and the shame was filling me up

until a year ago when i searched

"skin-picking" on google and discovered

that it had a real name.

dermatillomania.

falls under ocd-spectrum disorders.

i cried.

i cried and cried with relief.

i wasn't alone.

this was real.

this was real.

all this time i wondered if i

really was the only person who

suffered from this disorder and

now i had proof that i wasn't.

 

note: dermatillomania may be more common than you think.

but it is hard for people like me to reach out when

we've been picking for so long.

(i've been picking for eleven years.)

if you see someone doing it, please

don't judge them for it.

they may be suffering from this disorder.

as far as i can tell there

are not many treatments because

many doctors and therapists haven't

even heard of this so

just be supportive of that person.

thank you for reading.