Twilight Zone: Ugly Truths

I've always wondered where it's started.

I guess I never really gave it much thought actually, ive always been to shameful to put a timeline to it.

My self harming.

Now, idk you are not familiar with what an actual diagnosed psychological self harming disorder is, so to clarify in simple terms. My brain self copes and releases dopamine by feeling pain so in conclusion: Self-injurious compulsive cutting, burning or skin picking is a severe and chronic psychiatric and dermatologic problem associated with high rates of irregular intense emotions. It may be conceptualized as a variant of OCD or impulse-control disorder with self-injurious features and may, in some cases, represent an attempt to regulate said intense emotions.

I guess it was in seventh grade, my mom had moved us abruptly to Bakersfield California because she had both severe back problems (scoliosis) and a drug problem because of the pain it caused and well because prescription happy doctors during the opioid epidemics peak and her wonderful ex husband (also a doctor). We were trying to find a doctor to fix her spine, and she was trying to get off pain meds. Idk why, but I hated it. Every single moment of it. Everyone was so fake and it was like living in a twilight zone. In a desert valley in the mountains where they use 75% of the cities fucking water to make grass and everyone is just in their pretty little cars and pretty little houses and they all just are richy judgey pricky assholes and I just can't. I just kinda blurred my way through school days, didn't get involved in anything (wasn't like me) and I started dressy grungier feeling grungier. I had two friends that I absolutely loved that were just as out there as me and it made for the perfect trio.. They didn't know it then and maybe still don't now, but they got me thru that year.

My childhood best friend from Michigan lived a few hrs away and we hung out a couple times. Meh, she's a bitch and ended ruining my wedding a decade later by just uhm well, she was my maid of honor and she just forgot to lace my dress? Not really sure how that happens, but I picked the wrong best friend to stand by and it came back to bite me in the ass, quite literally considering that is what was out and revealed during my walk down the isle. LOL, yeah. so really touchy subject there that ugly truth is a whole other story.

Maybe it's not though. Because she's part of the reason, too. Hmm. Crazy how some of the people in my life have both helped my heal, and some have helped me to harm. My skin picking disorder escalated a lot after I cut ties with her, and lost my other best friend whom I should've picked to stand by me as a result of all of the chaos and her not being where she deserved in the line up.

yikes. here we goooo.

Anyway....

Back to 12 years old me.

I found a razor blade set in my aunts garage one day.

I would make little nicks on my wrists, inner thighs, ankles. No one ever noticed. So it was fine.

I remember the first time.

How the pain, was euphoric.

How for a few optimal seconds I released all the anxiety discomfort disconnected new girl teenage pressure and it was gratifying. I felt better. Happier after.

I would go in surges, or binges you could call them. I wouldn't self harm for some time because my mom, well she would notice. She loves skin, says it's really important and she loves me. And well, yeah she would notice so I would go in spurts.

We moved home to Coldwater, Michigan.

Cause that's where 12 year old me wanted to be over the west coast, and my momma left Cali even tho her love for the beach and took me home sweet home.

Weird sounds like I'm in the same boat right now with my daughter Aurora.

Okay back to the point

My happiness being back and the feeling of joy being comfortable and known again alone and also my friendships with a few girls after I moved home, helped me to not self harm as much.

One of my best friends, always knew that I self harmed, other girls probably did too, but she knew for sure and had even been with me when I had done it. She took pills or whatever she could get her hands on to cope, I self harmed. We had, still have a very different, sentimental bond. Neither of us do either now and are both mothers.

Well.

I can't say that I don't self harm.

I do. I just don't make cuts with a razor.

No now I just use a sterile kit and pick my skin. I also have a condition where my hairs are blondish red and they grow under my skin and make hair cysts. Most of the time cysts like this need to be surgically removed, the hairs are fused to skin layers, tissue, even muscle and fat.

I remove them anyway. any in grown hair too.

Pimple. Cysts. You name it. I never really had acne before all this either, And now my skin has gotten way worse because of the damage done to my moisture barrier.

so Now, I don't ever cut, don't even actually remember the last time I cut and only have one scar that only I know what it's from.

But. Now I pick my skin. Somewhere along the line of having four short interval pregnancies, multiple traumas, and ptsd triggers. Well. We're doing ugly truth here now right... One trigger in particular sent my skin picking /self harming into over drive about a year ago. I found out one of my best friends is on heroine. My mom killed herself because of her long battle with addiction to opioids. Said best friend was One of two at the hospital with me when she died. For a year now I have picked my skin. I have scars over a good percentage of my body.

Last year was rough for me, I was post partum taking care of four babies by myself as my husband worked out of state, and I found out that one of the few people I let be the help, one of my childhood friends whom I thought I could I trust my children's and newborns lives to was on heroine during one of the scariest fentanyl rises in the US ever! I lost my shit. Was having post partum anxiety and depression all wrapped into already having PTSD, ADD, and OCD. And it resulted in having excoriation disorder.I had another good friend, who was addicted to meth at this time, and this was equally as triggering as well. Something triggered in me after I found that out and found jus throw close the one drug I despise most was to my home and babies and how blind to it I was. My best friend Abby helped me survive all that and I'll always hold her close for that.

Today that same friend of mine, walked thru the same halls we once did when my mom died, only the saddest part is she was so high she probably didn't revenge notice, and so excited to leave to get to her next high . Only this time she left her baby boy, in the NICU.

Across from The children's hospital NICU/PICU there is the ICU. That's where she died. My mom. There are some waiting areas in between the two.

The three girls were sitting in that waiting room area ten year ago... are so much different from who we're today. (Unreleased name) is a heroine /drug addict who just gave up her kid to get high, selling her body for dope. Christa has multiple successful businesses, is almost done with nursing school and is a mom of two. I'm a mom of four, have an art business, am a public speaker and writer. we both now live on the coast where I set my moms ashes free a couple years ago after my wedding for our honeymoon.

Today I relapsed again from picking, after 11 days not. Today I realized she's already dead, has been for some time. And maybe a piece of her died in the ICU unit with my mom that day just like all us girls. But that's no excuse. My mom would be sick. And I hope she punches her square in the face when she sees her when she finally takes a little bit too much.

Today i realized she's already gone. And the next phone call I will get, will be to fly home for a funeral.

Today is the day I release her with love, My husband been teaching me this is okay to do

And today is the day I won't ever pick my skin or self harm again. I probably will thats probably a lie. But this is the day I'm breaking up with my own addictions driven by trauma. I don't need the euphoria. It brings the same feeling as doing the drugs I despise most.

It’s euphoria like this. That steals souls. And eats them.

It’s euphoria like this, that killed my mom. And my best friend too.

-KPJ . 13 minutes after self harming, for the last time.