Trance

"Elizabeth, stop pulling your hair!"

That was only last night. Sitting down, watching a movie with my family.

I hadn't realized I was doing it.

The bell rang and I stood up with the rest of my class, reaching down to get my backpack. It was then I saw the piles of hair.

I'm not even aware I'm doing it.

Sometimes I am, like when I look in the mirror in the morning, I know then that I am. I can watch myself do it. I could sit in the bathroom for hours. I know I do it at home, on the computer, the gathering piles of hair under my desk is what clued my parents in.

I tug my bandanna further over the front of my head, feeling around the back as I walk down the hallway. I wasn't sure where I'd just been tugging, but I needed to make sure it was hidden.

My mother suggested I just buzz it all off.

Eyes are on me, and I feel them. I hesitantly reach up to my hair, patting the bandana again just before plucking another, single strand.

Shit.

Fuck.

I don't have eyebrows left, that's how this started. I used to pluck my eyebrows. Before that, I was rolling eyelashes between my fingers, just slowly pulling them out by "accident."

No one knows anything that can help me.

My parents keep a close eye on me now, not only to correct me when I pull, but also to make sure I didn't start the next phase, something most people in my shoes fall to:

eating it.

I look like a cancer patient with a wig on the back of my head, jutting out in a sloppy bun, an attempt to deter future attacks.

I can't stop.

Nothing will stop me.

I don't know what to do.

"Ow, Liz, doesn't that hurt?" Delilah made a face at the lunch table across from me.

I look down at my hand to see another strand of hair.

Hair, it's everything I do, it's all I know these days.

I shake my head and dust my hands off, letting the strand fall to the ground.

"You want to come dress shopping with me and a few others? For prom?" She asked when I looked up again, after staring at the floor for a bit.

"I'm not going to prom." I sighed.

"One bad haircut and you won't go to prom?" She didn't know about what was happening, what had been happening for years. This year it just got unbearably noticeable so I had to cover it, but I've been wearing beanies for what feels like decades. "Get a wig! Or extensions!"

I have nowhere for the extensions to latch to, would be problem number one.

But, a wig...maybe if I could convince my parents.

I shook my head.

What if the wig falls off? Everyone will see it...

I can't...I can't keep living my life like this.

I took my hair down, twirled pieces of it around my finger until I heard those satisfying pops and snaps and felt the satisfaction that comes with the pinch when it comes out.

Even when I'm aware of it now...

I don't know how to stop.