12-13-03 @ 11:05 am EST

Ma cut off my hair yesterday.

I awoke, washed it, put the conditioning stuff in it that's supposed to make it more manageable as it's always frizzing and fraying, and went out to have her do it. She did it. Again. And again. And again. And again. Every time, something else was wrong--in too low, she brushed it all to one side, lumpy, a ridge on the left, parted in the middle, you name it. One time the tie even snapped. You know, it was ALMOST perfect the first time. But for that ridge on the left. I took it out and she did it over and over and over.

There ended up being a lot of shouting and screaming and sobbing and...you get the picture.

Now before you go rolling your eyes and thinking I'm a total baby, you may know already that I have OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. What my mom didn't seem to realize even when I told her is that this whole deal is NOT about me having nice-looking hair. It's NOT about me thinking everybody else thinks I look like crap. I KNOW my hair is at least more presentable than other people's hair, even if it's still crappy. I know people won't stare at me if it's messy or frizzy. I know all that. It doesn't MATTER because that's not what's BOTHERING me.

What bothers me is how I feel about how I look. As I tried to tell Ma (and of course she did not understand...I'm not saying she's stupid, as she would accuse me of doing, but she just doesn't "get" my emotions), my hair is about the ONLY part of my appearance I can control. My weight? Ha, forget that. My body shape? I'm stuck looking like a fat-assed swayback for the rest of my life, sorry. Even my teeth are beyond help by now. But my hair...it's the one thing I had at least a little bit of control over. If it looks like crap, it can just be put in a tail. The thing is, the tail has to be PERFECT.

And, as I also tried to tell her, now I don't even have control over THAT and THAT is the reason for all the crying and screaming. I do care what people think of me, but when I leave the house like one day out of seven, I hardly give a rat's ass what people think of my hair! I even got upset if it looked like crap when my family and I were the only ones around! That should have been a big hint that it wasn't the way I looked to OTHERS that bothered me--it was the way I looked to myself. The fact that I had no control over that whatsoever anymore. I can't put my own damn hair in a frigging decent ponytail and this has been a huge issue between my mother and I for years, as she's the only one who could do it. After many repeats.

As Ma started to grouse at me, "What does this have to do with OCD? You were having ME do it all the time!" And that's right--to a point. I have never, ever told Ma this for fear of her stopping it cold. Do you realize what she's been doing all along, and what I've been MAKING her do?--she was ENABLING me. Enabling my obsession for perfect hair by taking part in my compulsion putting it up. I didn't get to tell her that but maybe I should, though I doubt she'd understand. (Again I can practically hear her accusing me of saying she's stupid...*sigh* We just think on different wavelengths. She kept comparing our hairstyles and I had to keep saying, "THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOUR HAIR! You feel COMFORTABLE with how you look--I don't! You can hardly compare the two of us!"--which is true. If I had any frigging self-confidence I would not GIVE a rip about my damn hair! I would be too busy doing CONSTRUCTIVE things--like getting a job!)

What Ma did not understand was that OCD is not something that affects just the sufferer. It affects EVERYONE around them, especially if the sufferer manages, like I did, to draw somebody else into becoming a part of their rituals. Dad plays a part in a "goodbye" ritual of mine, though he probably has no clue it's a ritual--he honks goodbye every time he leaves, and I wave at the window. I used to cry if I missed him honking! Ma took part in my hairstyling ritual by doing my hair as I cannot see behind me to do it properly. Those are just two examples but I'm positive there must be MANY more they take part in, ones I don't even know about yet.

If I thought it would help I would mention Monk as an example to Ma; she loves that show. Take a look at the torment Monk puts poor Sharona through. And look at the torment she puts HIM through! You see, just because only one person has the disorder doesn't mean they are the only one paying for it.

(And by now I'm pretty sure BOTH of my parents have the disorder themselves, to some extent...I have to get it from somewhere, and they show definite signs...)

Another thing that has constantly bothered me is Ma's belief that I am just malingering--that I do this out of some twisted sense of "fun." She really BELIEVES this! That as I'm sitting there praying to God my hair will just go IN already so we can stop fighting, and sobbing my eyes out, that I'm actually ENJOYING the whole thing, and doing it just to piss her off! No matter how many tears I shed, how many hunks of hair I tear out in frustration, how many times I tell her this is NOT so, she still refuses to believe me. Even after what happened yesterday I'm still pretty sure she believes I find the whole thing amusing. I cannot understand why she thinks so poorly of me, that I would actually not only drag HER down so much, but make MYSELF so miserable just for fun. I admit I can be manipulative just to get people to pay attention to me, but there is no way in hell I find ANY of it fun! I HATE being this way! I would give almost ANYTHING to be different, to just be normal. Think of all the things I could accomplish, if I were just normal. I would not be writing in this dumb journal, if I were normal like everyone else is.

(And before you say, hell, nobody's normal!--do you see YOURSELF doing all this stuff in this entry? I bet you have a boyfriend/girlfriend or a job or at least you don't engage in pointless rituals half the day, like I do. Be happy you're not me. I could be much worse off, but I could be so much better, too.)

Ma was the one who suggested she try to apply me for disability. As I tried to say to her--how is it that she thinks I'm sick enough to qualify for disability, but when it comes to the sickness itself, she thinks I'm MALINGERING? I told her to be sure to tell the disability people she doesn't believe I'm actually suffering, that I'm doing this for fun, just to be honest. And that's true also. She MUST have believed, at some point in the past, that I was truly sick and miserable, for she was the one who got me into therapy, who got me to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist and who got me on medication. But insurance ran out and that all stopped, and...now it's as if she no longer believes I was ever sick. Both she and Dad (the latter of whom showed AMAZING restraint considering what I did last night--I have to give him that) are STILL of the mind that this is something I can just "get over." Every time I asked Ma for help or suggestions on what to do if her plan to cut my hair failed and just made it worse, she replied with "Just get over it" or "Just live with it." Oh, easy for her to say, since she would not be the one walking around LOOKING like that! Like I said--she has self-confidence. I do not. That makes all the difference in the world. When you have so little in you that's worth anything, then you will focus on what little insignificant things you CAN control--in my case, my writing, and my stupid hair. Now does anybody wonder why I throw such fits over my writing? It and my hair are reflections of me as a person. I'm not worth anything myself. So I have to focus on the things I can control. I can have my hair put up nice, and I can write the best I can. When I lose control over either of those...of course bad things are going to happen.

So what you may see as huge overreactions on my part to such seemingly stupid things are in fact my inability to control the few things I have control over anymore. And even though I'm sure you feel these are stupid things to get upset about, imagine YOURSELF losing control over something that matters to you. The one part of yourself that means everything. Imagine losing control over that, and how would you feel? As dumb as it sounds, my hair and writing are the two things I felt I could control with any amount of success. Nothing else about me matters, so I put all my effort into those. That's what causes all the rage and anxiety. When I lose control over those things, I am nothing.

It sounds melodramatic, but it's true, at least in my head.

And as my parents refuse to understand--for God's sake, if I could just get over it, BELIEVE ME I WOULD! I want to be NORMAL! I don't WANT to worry or get upset over every stupid little thing that's beyond my control. I don't want to care what a bunch of anonymous persons think of my writing, whether they're reading it or not. I don't want my creativity to hinge on whether somebody leaves me a comment or just walks away without a word. I don't want to wake up every day to spend over an hour making sure every hair is in the right place, or having somebody do my hair over and over and over until her hands are hurting and we're screaming at each other in a rage. I do not want to be that person! I want to be ANYTHING other than that person! Believe me, I do. And even though she doesn't believe me, I've tried. It never worked.

I think I could overcome most of my problems, but that takes help, and neither parent is willing to admit that I need it. Even if they were, there's still no way I can get it. No money. It costs thousands of dollars for therapy and they'd much rather just stick you on drugs nowadays, which for problems like OCD and social anxiety means diddly-squat--you can alleviate the anxiety, sure, but if the behaviors and belief systems are still hardwired into your brain, you're screwed. I am literally going to be stuck this way forever. And seeing as my parents are probably going to retire in ten years or so, meaning I will no longer have any valid support, this thought terrifies me. The moment my parents die or retire is the moment I am dead. I mean it. They can't support me then, nobody else will want me, and I can't support myself. I have said before and I will even say it now that I do not believe in suicide, but when that moment comes, I'm at a loss to think of any other alternative. I will be dead anyway--what else will I do? As long as I'm not getting help, I will not get better, ever, and I will always be this way. I see no future for myself. I never have.

But anyway, sorry about that...that's an entry I've been meaning to type for quite a while, ever since I realized it...but I thought it would be manipulative to share it. Like anybody online could make a difference what happens to me ten years from now. It's just venting, and by then I will probably no longer be online anyway, so who cares. I'm not killing myself at the moment or in the near future, if anyone was concerned. As I was saying, I just don't understand the continued non-understanding of my parents when it comes to this. THEY are the ones who once admitted I have a problem, who got me help, who even now are considering bothering with disability (like I'll qualify anyway--right!). But they are also the ones who think I'm "not really" sick, that I'm just doing this to piss them off, that I could be completely better if I just wanted to. Honest to GOD, I have tried thinking positively and just stopping behaviors and...EVERYTHING. None of it worked. It just made me feel worse whenever I failed. If they could see all the times I tried and failed and grew even more miserable...yes, it's true that I stay stuck in bad behaviors, that I "enjoy" being miserable, but that's only because I'm too afraid to try something else by now! Nothing else has worked, they had no good suggestions ("Just live with it"--thanks, that works), and my tiny shred of belief in myself just grows tinier and tinier every time I am told I can be better if I just snap out of it yet when I try I fail yet again. I know I can't just snap out of it. But I've been told to do so so many times, by now I really DO feel there's something wrong with me, in that I can't just snap out of it. Hell, everybody's telling me to just do it, which means it would work for them, right? Why not for me? Why am I the exception? Must be my fault.

Last night we tried doing my hair over and over and over. Finally in frustration I put it in a loose tail of my own and we went shopping. Any other day I wouldn't have done this, and if I would have, I would have had Ma put it in a regular tail as soon as we got home. Instead, she cut it off. No, it was not a "COME HERE AND SIT STILL, YOU LITTLE SHIT!"-type thing. I let her do it, but I sobbed the entire time. I just knew I would look horrible. It would only be worse. Because cutting it all off was the ONE thing I had not tried yet, and everything else had failed miserably, so why wouldn't this, too? The thing is, all the other things I tried were reversible--this would not be, at least for a few months, until it grew back. If it failed, I would have to live with it because the best suggestion she had to offer was "Just live with it."

She cut it off to shoulder length (it was almost halfway down my back before--I thought maybe that growing it longer would make it frizz less, I was wrong). I kept my face covered. She yelled at me repeatedly to lift my head so she could see if it was even or not, but I just couldn't lift my head--only confident people lift their heads, and I am not confident. Especially not then. After that I went to sit on the couch, still crying and hiding my face. I knew I looked awful, even more awful than I had before. (As I told Ma, who cared if the women in the hairstyle magazines had ugly hair?--they were all BEAUTIFUL--if their hair was bad, they had their pretty faces to fall back on, and I do not have that! When she pointed out the UGLY models, of course I knew that what they lacked in looks they more than made up for in self-confidence--I have neither looks, nor self-confidence, nor, I believed, even decent hair anymore--so I had nothing.) Dad tried to get me to cheer up (for all the badmouthing I do of him I again REALLY have to say I'm impressed by how he handled it last night), but I just could not. I felt so awful. Short of me losing all my writing, things could not get any worse. Now EVERYTHING about me looked horrible.

I finally managed to lift the little mirror sitting on the end table and peer at myself through one eye. My hair was falling in my face, it was so short. I knew it would be this horrible frizzy awful mess because my hair has long been frayed and damaged from years of brushing and tearing and putting it up in tails all the time. I knew it would look so awful.

I peered at myself through two eyes and then got up to go to the bathroom, still covering my face. I looked at myself in there, though I hated doing so.

My hair fell down on both sides, parted in the middle. Curling out at the bottom a bit. Aside from a bit of uneven frizz on the back right side...it was straight. Smooth. It stayed where it was supposed to. It fell in my face, but when I brushed it back, it looked normal. Later on I even tossed my head around and shook it wildly to simulate movement or a strong wind. It messed up a little. I ran my fingers through it and...it went back to normal. No hair tie, no brush, no masses and masses of gel like I used every day until the back of my head was as hard as a helmet. It just hung there and did what hair usually does. It looked like hair.

I went out to Ma after I summoned the guts and told her I'm sorry. She was still simmering, of course. She saw my constant demands for her to redo my hair as a comment on her own abilities--"To you, I can never do anything right!"--and though that's not what I felt at all, I understand completely why she felt that way. I had to say it a couple of times but she finally stood up and hugged me. I can't say I wouldn't have demanded her time like that if I had it to do all over again--I know that it would have played out just the same, because that need for control is always going to be there, as long as I'm not getting help. I can't even say I'll never do it again. But last night, at least, I wore my hair down. It's still falling in my face and I'm still brushing it back but...I'm not a hideous ugly mess. I was so positive I would be. I still don't understand why I'm not.

I keep fearing I'll wake up or look in the mirror and bam, there it will be, frizzing and looking like shit just as I'd thought. I hope that does not happen. I really really do. After all of that, I do not want to go through that again.

I pray some OTHER stupid compulsion doesn't come along to take that one's place, as usually ends up happening. Lately I've been trying to gradually wean myself off of taping shows over and over and over and it's only slightly successful; that and this are two of my biggest obsessions, and I really do not need to deal with both of them at once.

I'll try to think positive and hope this stays looking this way, but you know how I am...

And I would post a picture to show you what I look like now, but 1. why the hell should I waste webspace on something so stupid?; 2. posting pictures of yourself just to show off your new "hairstyle" is just gross vanity, which I do not need to show; and 3. who the hell would give a damn or look at the stupid picture anyway. I know I wouldn't. Plus every picture of me comes out looking ugly no matter what my hair is doing, so...no picture, sorry.

I'm not as depressed right now as this entry sounds, aside from that constant ten-years-from-now fear, but that's ten years from now, not now, and I'm the only one worrying about it, so...I really just hope this hair thing is done with so I can have some more free time and don't have to go through screaming matches every day. I hate that. I just want to be normal.

Poo, I really wanted to browse online books, but it took me all hour to type this up. Well, I will not proofread it so if it's atrocious, or if I really put my foot in my mouth, I apologize; all the rancor in here was aimed solely at me. I'll post something much better some other time, I hope.

Tar...