If you don't kick yourself in the butt, no one will.

The rational mind preaches, preaches, and preaches in circles. Yet, I'm still crouched over the bathroom sink. The eyebrow of choice is tilted closer to the mirror.

You promised you would stop!!! You promised!!!! Never again, never!!!!

Ultimatums? Futile. I seem to be afraid of....of...something. Who knows what it is? I most certainly don't. This is too much of a distraction. And entertainment. I'm deep into an escape...from something.

You're going to look so ugly! You won't even get that summer job the state your brows are in....why don't you just stop now, while there are at least SOME left??

If you ran a slideshow of my brows over the days, you'd basically see something like the Amazon rainforest being cleared away by nitpicky farmers.

The terrain is now barren and ugly. But it fades out of my concern; I am submerged in a shallow depth of field. A field of soft flesh, the next sharp needle poking my attention, scraping and scraping its chain of proteins against my attention span.

Screw it all, screw it all, just yank it out. Make it quiet again, make the universe be at peace again. You can get away with the outside half of the brow missing; the important parts are still defined, and the edges can be mimicked in makeup pencil, and even stealthily hidden beneath dark bangs.

If you don't kick yourself in the butt, no one will.

Parents call me ugly. Friends can't comprehend, they keep staring into their own world. As I do into my own. (let me out!)

THEY say I don't have enough willpower.

Well, THEY haven't heard the obsessive voice screaming in protest against every urge... every fretful night I stayed up pulling until 3 AM. They haven't smelled the sterile waft of bandaids I tried paralyzing my fingers in. The plans, the ideas, the philosophies, the chants, the lists, the desires I meticulously wrote down. The handfuls of successful days and delays and strange words I made up, where for a sweet hour or 24 I could stall the occurence.

Because, in one nervous hour, the entire willpower and work of a week becomes irrelevant. In one tug, the months spent regrowing the hair fall back into the drain.

Just as my years fall into the drain.

Two years used to be a long chunk of time to grow. Now, it feels as though my past two years experiencing trichotillomania have been more of a stagnation, or even a decay. I need to find my mind again. My control. My discipline. The ability to just sit or endure a challenging task, or boredom, and not have to rush to the mirror like a dog. Tail between ... eyebrows.

The time increasingly drains away as my mind loses itself in the raw pleasure. I need to stop while I still can. With all the time I spend pulling, I could be.....getting a good night's sleep. Being more present to my friends. Actually learning material for school. Master an art form, or a language.

If you don't kick yourself in the butt, no one will.