Spring into action

It's official. After the most mild winter I can remember in New York it appears that spring is already here. Which means so many of my fears are also back- bright lights, sweaty make up, water, etc. I know I've mentioned it before but these things hold me back.

I have done okay this week. Nothing great and I'm certainly not pull free but I haven't gone pull crazy so I'll try and put it in the "win" column. I do, however, have less than 3 weeks until my vacation and about 4 until my cousin's wedding- the cousin that has trich but won't talk to me about it. She is getting married after being with her boyfriend for about 7 years and she has, as far as I am aware, been able to manage her trich and will be married with eyebrows, eyelashes and a full head of hair. I know a lot of us wish we could say the same.

I received a comment on a post yesterday and the reader was mentioning how afraid she is to tell friends and family about trich. I remember that feeling all too well. The one advise I can give (and i wrote a bit more about this in January 2010 if you want to look at more posts on this topic) is to tell people. I thought my friends would judge me and look at me like I was a freak with this unspeakable disease- they didnt. In fact, quite the opposite. They were supportive and wonderful and for the first time I didnt feel so alone. Admittedly I did have a good friend who didn't have quite the reaction I wanted or needed, but dont let that stop you. Your true friends and family might and probably will surprise you and likely have a secret of their own. We all have our shit. Even now, when i'm having a tough time with trich, it is a bit of a relief to have them know and while i'm not 100% confident when I am eyebrow-less around them, it is leaps and bounds more confident than I was when I was trying to hide it from them.

The funny things is that those people I want to speak to most about it, the family that has trich, just don't and won't talk to me. I still don't get it. All I want is to know how they learned to manage it- give me tips!! Are they afraid that if they talk about it it will come back? I want to try and understand where they are coming from but I just can't. And so I will go to my cousin's wedding and will be jealous that she has found a way to get all her hair back and to have wedding pictures with hair and I will continue to wonder how she did it. Because she won't tell me.

This is a very lonely disease. We feel as though we have no one to talk to, that we can't talk to those who love us for fear of what they will think and we often can't talk to those who even know about trich from their own experience because they wont talk to us. We avoid getting close to people and we carry the shame of what we do around with us like a ton of bricks that we have been sentenced to keep with us forever. We remain anonymous on blogs and support groups, refuse to go to meetings and retreats, because the idea of revealing ourselves is terrifying. What if someone one day makes the connection? What if someone reading my blog figures out who I am and that they know me, and then they tell someone else?

I sometimes see people without hair on the subway and am tempted to say something to them. Something simple like "hey, you too?" but maybe they have cancer or another disease and then I'll just be left feeling bad and alone again. Maybe they will be mortified that I know their secret and I will ruin their day. So I never say anything but I wonder. I look at how they do their make up and try to think if I would have seen their lack of hair if I was not so obsessed with hair and trich myself.

And so like every other post, I leave this one with a goal in mind and with the best of intentions. I'm hoping that I can show up at her wedding with at least partial eyebrows and with my eyelashes fairly in tact. Even if I stopped pulling today it would take weeks for them to come back in completely but something is better than nothing (and nothing is what I have now). I've heard that hair grows faster in warmer weather so my fingers (and toes) are crossed that this spring/summer I wont continue to hold myself back!

A Family Affair

Lots of people on other blogs and online support groups have commented on the various reactions from family members once they discover that the person has trich. Sadly, most of these reactions are not pleasant and have caused a lot of pain to the person suffering from trich and part of me thinks that at least a small part of that negative reaction can be attributed to the family member simply not knowing how to react.

I believe that most parents want to help their children but what do you do when your child has a destructive habit/disease that there is no cure for? Many people dont know anything about trich, let alone that it is so much more than a physical problem but that it has such a negative effect on our self esteem. About two posts ago I commented on how my dad would sometimes draw my eyelashes before going away so he could compare, and possibly punish me, if they were not the same when he returned. I've never forgotten that and while I know without a doubt my dad loves me and would never do anything to hurt me, it still has (obviously) had a last impact and was very hurtful and embarrassing. I wonder if it would have been different had our parents reacted differntly? But what could they have done?

My parents tried almost everything to get me to stop. Punishments, therapy, gloves, band aids, embarassment (I was also not allowed to get contacts until I stopped- after I hit 14 and still hadn't stopped what was then a 6 year habit, my parents caved and let me get rid of my hideous glasses. Oh yeah, and my mom used to say "boys dont make passes at girls who wear glasses" as kind of a fucked up incentive. Sweet)

Anyway, I digress. What made me first think to write this post in the first place was that this past weekend I attended a bat mitvah for my cousin and had lots of family around. It brought into sharp focus how many family members I have with some form of trich but also saddened me to think that out of the 8 or so family members that have had the disease in some form, not one ever talked to me about it in a productive way. My cousin, the cousin I am closest to but lives in CA, had trich worse than me but managed to stop. I have tried for YEARS to get her to talk to me about it, even told her about the hypnotist this past weekend, but she just doesnt want to. How can I push it, is that fair to her? I know how embarrassing and hard it can be to talk about it but it still bothers me.

I dont know. Besides my mom who pulled her eyelashes for a short time and then just stopped (and she can offer no helpful tips) my cousin is the person who would be able to relate to me the best. I know I have to let it go but I hope and pray that if I ever have kids or nieces or nephews or even friends that have trich, that I will happily offer them every and any resource and help I can. I hope that one day this is no longer a shameful disease but something people know about and understand, so that we can all feel comfortable talking about it.

Anyway, on another note, my boyfriend met my entire family at the bat mitvah and was a bit hit. We also had some pretty serious discussions this weekend and have decided to move in together. Even though he knows about my trich I still would never want him to see me completely without make up (and my hair is growing back pretty slowly but still growing back) so I have until June to get everything back. Let's hope the hypnosis sticks but my motivation just grew even more!!

Weekend Getaway

Once again I'm sorry for being such a bad blogger. Rather than returning from Chicago on Sunday as planned, our flight was canceled due to (nonexistent) bad weather in NY (bad Jet Blue, bad) and we didn't end up getting home until Monday night. Of course, on Monday I had two court appearances scheduled and apparently my colleague got an earful from the judge about my absence (what did he think i could do? Strap on wings and fly back on my own?) Anyway, I'm now back trying to conquer the inevitable pile of work that has accumulated while I was gone.

Chicago was a good trip although it was a bit of family overload. That said, I went 5 days without a single urge to pull which is pretty incredible. I'm not sure why, when I'm away, I am so controlled with trich and yet the minute I return home the urges find their way back. So frustrating. It's not even as though I was distracted the whole time or anxiety free- I can't explain it. It's now been about 2 weeks since I've slipped and my eyebrows and eyelashes are once again looking great

For anyone who hasn't read some of my previous posts, I just want to be a little more clear about my "pull-freeness" - I am still (as I've confessed to in the past) allowing myself a "grooming night" once every couple weeks where I can maintain my eyebrows so that they don't get messy looking which I have no doubt would result in me pulling out everything. Also, I am still allowing myself to pull the dark hairs that come in around my naval area and around my bikini line- I don't know whether you consider that cheating or not but it's what I'm doing for now. I just didn't want to anyone reading this to be mislead as I'm sure some people would say this isn't really conquering trich- I'm just doing it in my own way since my focus is to get my eyebrows and eyelashes back as that's what has the biggest impact on my day to day life and happiness.

My mom has been continuing to tell me how good my eyelashes look every time I see her and that feels really good. My cousins and other family members, the ones who either have trich themselves or know about my trich, said nothing while we were in Chicago. At one point my aunt said something which led me to talking about the fact that I had eyelashes (i truthfully cant remember how it came up) and her reply was "cool" and then she moved on. I thought the return of my eyelashes after a 21 year hiatus would merit more than a "cool"! None of my friends have brought up my trich either although I kind of wish they would- maybe they think that now that I have them looking pretty good that I've beaten trich. Ha! Besides the 5 day hiatus I received while away, it is still a daily battle- right now I'm just wishing more people understood about trich and what its like. Oh well, maybe one day.