"So how did you do it, Evan?" asked Mr. Gillespie.
"Do what?" I countered, a tad too casually for the obvious victory.
"'Do what' he says, 'do what'. Boy, we thought she was just gone, gone, gone! We brought her back from the hospital because Marta was getting sick from her own anti-depressants she took for missing the poor kid, but we couldn't handle her any better. When I sent her back, she had gone through the hair on her head, her eyebrows, her lashes, and, well, her whole body, and I had to physically restrain her from tearing out any more of her fingernails. We thought you were a complete fool to take her on, and just look at her! She looks like my pretty angel again!"
Simone sat cross legged on the floor holding a steaming cup of tea in both hands. She smiled at her father shyly, and she was indeed pretty. Pale, yes, trembling, yes, but a thin, short halo of fine baby hair clung about her head, and her eyes looked almost natural with their new, soft lashes and eyebrows. "It's very difficult, Daddy," she said, "you know me, you know how hard it is for me not to turn it back on myself, but Evan helps me."
"Well yes, clearly! And you've done a wonderful job, Evan, but how?"
"Well, we have her in therapy three times a week and we have a great homeopathic herbalist who gives us teas to calm down some of that frenetic energy instead of all those damned drugs they gave her at the hospital, but I think the best thing has been the advice of the therapist to give her things to help her sublimate the urge away from her body, to dissociate the behavior from self destruction. We still have a long way to go before she won't need to act out, but at least it's not on herself now."
"I don't hurt myself now, Daddy!" she said, triumphantly.
"Oh, baby, I'm so glad!" he cried, and pulled her into a tight embrace.
The emotion was a bit overwhelming for her, and as her father wept softly in her arms, her hands fluttered off of his back, and she began frantically stretching out her fingers, and then balling them into fists, over and over. Finally she pushed him back, and said, tremblingly, "I, I want to go work on the rug now!" and went into her bedroom.
"The rug?" asked Mrs. Gillespie.
"Like I said, she's got a long way to go. When she feels upset, or insecure, or happy, or bored, or well, when she feels just about anything, she still needs to work her hands, so we keep other things around for her to pluck. She pulls the threads out of small rugs I buy for her. I also get her down pillows, for she likes pulling the little feathers through the fabric by the quills.
"We tried getting her to make things, pottery classes, embroidery, painting, writing, gardening, but the obsession wants to pluck out, not to create.
"She likes pulling up grass, leaf by leaf, so I keep the yard well fertilized and buy very fast growing grass seeds. That's kind of good, really, because she gets some sun now when she does that. I buy her stuffed animals, and she pulls of their fur, pulls out their eyes, and then pulls the stuffing out through the eyeholes. When she does a stuffed animal, it's pretty disturbing to watch, because you can still see a need to pick an entity apart, but better a toy than herself. I tried dolls at first, but the jump from doll hair to her own hair was too small for her, so I got rid of them.
"I can even take her out for short periods now, ever since I discovered that bubble wrap sort of works for her. That's not quite as disconcerting to our friends and to strangers as having her methodically pluck something clean, but it's not as satisfying to her, and after a couple of hours she may turn to herself again. Some days are better than others. Tuesday she went the whole day without pulling at anything at all, but Wednesday she needed to work at a piece of rug by lunchtime."
Mr. Gillespie listened attentively to my description of his daughter's alien world and then asked me "So why, Evan? Why are you doing this for her? She can't work yet. It's expensive to rent a two bedroom place yourself, plus taking care of her and, um, indulging her with all these sublimation objects you buy for her, and most of all, it must be an incredible emotional drain. You're not her family, you're not her husband, you're not even her boyfriend. My God, boy, even if you were her boyfriend, her, her lover, there must be other girls out there, girls who are not so hard to take. I need to know, because if you get tired of all this, she may wind up right back where she started, in that hospital. I don't want her to be alone. I know this is a silly question to ask of a roommate, but, well, what are your intentions? Why are you doing so much for Simone?"
"The answer is not going to make you feel any better at all about me as the person who is taking care of your daughter..." I said, uncertainly.
"No, go on, answer," urged Mr. Gillespie. you're a gift, son, and we do want to know. I love my daughter, but she is completely insane. Why are you giving her so much when you could just let the doctors do it?"
"This isn't charity, sir, I need her. She's the only one who understands me."
Fiends snarl, tear Mom's hair!
This story is a piece of fiction. If you want to find out more about trichotillomania from a more reliable source than a story, check out the Fairlite Trich Web Server .
Copyright © 1993, Morrisa Stanfield Sherman.
This work may not be reproduced in any form without the author's
explicit permission
