I do. Literally. I mean, I literally pull my hair out. It’s called trichotillomania and I’ve been doing it since I was nine years old.

If you’ve been following the blog for awhile, perhaps you’ve noticed a big bald spot on the right side of the back of my head.

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Yeah, that one.

So, when I was just about to turn nine years old, my family moved from Newark, Delaware to Massapequa Park, New York. Trust me, this was A Big Change. I was a shy kid to begin with, but Newark was small and I had a couple of very good friends and I did okay. The elementary school was so small that there were very few classes in each grade, so unless someone new moved in, you knew everyone and stayed with the same kids grade after grade and there was a comfort for me in that familiarity. We lived right across the street from a giant wooded preserve where my friends (Hi, Suzy!) and I could hide out for hours and hours and play horses or wade in the stream. There was a horse farm walking distance up the road from my house where I would just lean on the fence and watch “Speedy” grazing in the field for hours. It was such a nice peaceful place to grow up.

THEN we moved to Long Island. There were a zillion people. There were like six classes in each grade and everyone knew everyone except me. And I got nervous and anxious. And started pulling my hair out. It’s not like I said, “Oh, I’m anxious, I’m going to pull my hair out.” It’s something I don’t even remember starting…but before I knew it, I had a bald spot. Ack.

I’m sure it sounds weird and even painful to someone who doesn’t do it. But that’s not how it feels to me. It’s not like it’s a comforting feeling. But it’s an uncomfortable feeling when your brain thinks of it and you can’t sort of “settle down” til you’ve done it. Like having an itch that Must Be Scratched and until you scratch, it’s all you can focus on. Or like if you crack your knuckles. They just feel…like you’re very aware of them…you can tell they need to be cracked and until you just give in and crack them, they stay top of mind and annoyingly, distractingly uncomfortable. So you crack them, go AHHH and move on.

Anyway, since starting 49 years ago (wow), I’ve managed at times to control it, but…it doesn’t last long. When I get anxious or stressed or sad, when I’m sick in bed or in any kind of pain…all of a sudden I’ll realize I’ve been doing it again. Ugh.

For years I tried to wear my hair in ways that would attempt to hide it, but like men who do the comb-over thing (I’m talking to YOU, Mr. President), that doesn’t work. My hair stylists would always ask me: “Do you have alopecia?” I would say I didn’t know, it was probably just stress fall-out, and some of them would try different products on the bald spot, like that awful spray paint in a can for men…or a tinted powder product called Caboki. I think I actually have a little trial size sample of that somewhere. It’s annoying and leaves a weird feeling on the little bit of hair that lays over the spot. Not worth it to me.

A few years ago at work, I walked past someone in the hall and he called back to me when he got to the doors at the end, “Hey, in this light it looks like you have bald spots!” and I just ponied up and said, “I do!” He was mortified (good…the dummy! who says things like that??)…and I was not. I’d reached a point of “it is what it is.” I mean, I don’t like having bald spots, but…if I haven’t managed to stop doing it after 49 years, I will possibly never stop.

So, it was interesting when my hair started falling out from the chemo in 2017 and I had my head shaved. I wondered if all my hair would grow back. The thing about pulling for so long, just like repeatedly pulling the same weed out of your garden, eventually you kill the roots and nothing grows back. I also wondered if being bald would help me break the habit since there was nothing to pull! Well, all my hair did not grow back. I had several spots before head-shaving…some came back, but the biggest one in the back did not. And the habit was broken…while I had no hair, ha ha. Now that it’s longer again, I feel the pull to pull and have caught myself doing it. I’m really trying to stop, but. Most of the time I do it I’m not even aware.

Sadly, I have no happy ending to share with you. I haven’t discovered a miracle cure or managed to train myself not to do it. It’s more just…almost like being overweight…something else about myself…some other imperfection characteristic that I have just accepted as part of who I am.

I’ve only openly discussed this with one person in my life (that guy). Obviously friends and family have noticed, and maybe my mother told me to stop it (I can just hear her in my head, “Oh, Bettye,” in that disappointed tone) back in the day and I just don’t remember. But I’ve never talked about it to anyone before and it was just starting to feel like A Thing.

A Thing I shouldn’t try to hide.