Content warning for discussions and descriptions of skin picking.

 

pulsing red pustule

glowing white yellow apex

tender

ripe

yes, ooze

yes, pOp

dont be so stubborn!

post traumatic inflammation

crusty coating,

crumbling

 

I sit, reading journal articles as research for something I might probably never end up writing. My left hand, bereft of stimulation as the right one gently scrolls, rises and traces a path familiar across my forehead, skating across its surface, searching. Not finding what it was looking for it moves to my hairline, aha, a small spot forming, a barely visible raised bump where shaved short hair meets naked skin. It runs over it, feeling its contours, learning its topography, before pushing, harder, scratching now. It knows there is something below the surface- but not yet, it's not ripe enough. The fingers move on, scratching gently along the scalp, in parallel with the greenery on top, searching for something, a change; in texture, in sensation, in height. A spot, a patch of dryness, an old scab, aha! A pleasing spot to scratch. Raking fingernails over the spot again and again, finding its edges, darting from one to the other until it flits back to the spot on the hairline, to the back of the neck, to the right arm, the the shoulder, where it traces over and over searching for something to grab onto, to focus its attentions on.

 

I cannot count how many times as a child my mum would tell me to stop picking at my skin and just leave it alone. Once on an airplane she admonished me and when I insisted I hadn’t even been scratching that hard she pointed. My upper arm was smeared with blood from where I had scratched an innocuous bump away into nothing. 

 

I used to get bitten a lot by midges, they would pepper itching lumps across my body and I didn’t stand a chance. Without fail the ones on my head would become crusted wounds, scabby and weeping and yet I wouldn’t leave them alone, intent on bothering them until they eventually disappeared. I wonder, if you shaved my head smooth, the years of destructive picking and scratching would be evident. 

 

I find it odd, that for someone who has picked their skin their whole life I don’t have more scars. I used to have a small one on my finger from when I was in high school. At that time the focus was on peeling off skin around my fingernails, over and over again, removing the hard skin that grew back. Eventually, one of my fingers became infected, hot and swollen. Of course, I only touched it more, pushing on it and finding satisfaction in that discomfort. Soon it became pussy and inflamed. I had to sit my English prelim on a computer, because I couldn’t finish the two essays required by hand.

 

Over the years the areas that have been my main focus have changed. In primary school, my legs were covered in scaly dry skin, lizard-like, and I would spend hours by lamp-light dutifully peeling flakes of it away, dusting bed sheets and gym mats and carpets with snowy detritus. This would leave lots of tiny scabs where too many layers of skin had been worn away. I remember the sting of the saltwater in the wounds when I went to the beach with my cousins.

 

A similar pattern occurs when I develop seborrheic dermatitis across my forehead and around my eyes in my second year of university, but this time the pieces of skin are bigger. Peeling them off again and again because my fingers are constantly seeking, finding the rough edges and pulling, pulling until they’re gone and it's smooth again. Piles of white on the floor of a black box theatre, surely I should know better than to be doing this shit in university but I genuinely can't help myself. I think of the weird girl from the breakfast club who shakes her dandruff out onto the desk, and try to sweep away the evidence. 

 

When I briefly went to CAMHS I brought up the skin picking. The psychologist tried to figure out why I did it. She said lots of people pick their skin. I said yes, but not usually to the point where their fingers get infected and they can’t take exams. I’d had dreams of scratching my scalp until it bled and dyed my hair red. She asked if I felt a compulsion  to do it. If I felt something bad would happen if I just...didn’t pick. Seemingly angling for some sort of obsessive compulsive label. But that’s not right. I don’t think anything bad will happen if I don't pick. I just can’t not do it. Any chance they get my hands are roving, finding irregularities and eliminating them. No thought involved. When I hold my partner and my hand strokes the back of their arm, they have to tell me to leave their skin alone because already, without permission, my fingernails are beginning to dig in, to scrape, to scratch.

 

As I started T I worried; when I grow facial hair am I going to try and pull it out? If I get spots will I pop them and pop them and pop them until my face is scarred? Thankfully I didn't get much acne, the spots on my back are popped and scabbed over, but they are a much greater challenge than face spots, and usually they're covered in clothes. And thankfully I don't bother my facial hair, although hair pulling was not generally something that I did.  It turns out that when you begin to grow in much thicker hair than you did previously, your follicles will become a bit irritated and you might get a smattering of spots just where those hairs will be coming through. But they don’t last forever, and once the hair has grown through things calm down. 

 

In some ways it is better now, I don’t have any large patches of dry skin, I've got cream for my dermatitis (heads up, sometimes reading webpage after webpage on skincare is not what you need and you should just go to your GP about it). But always my hands will skate along my arms, my head, my face, I will check for spots I can prod and squeeze and pop, little sebaceous build-ups, ingrown hairs, dry patches, anything. 

 

But fundamentally, I no longer pick to the point that it causes me a great deal of harm. Although I’m not sure I’ll ever stop, at least I am no longer in a place of bothering an infected follicle on my arm until it gets septic and has a scary red line coming off it. And I think part of this is to do with accepting my gender. Coming out and realising what a significant aspect of myself I had been denying for so many years, it took loads off me that I wasn’t even aware I had been carrying. I no longer spend hours looking in the mirror, bothering my skin and wondering why I hate my face so much, why I don’t recognise myself. There is a peace that comes with realising your truth that is impossible to describe, the wide reaching impact it has on seemingly unrelated aspects of your life. 

 

I wonder, when I eventually get top surgery, what I will realise I have been carrying this whole time.