How It All Began

I don’t remember much of the beginning.  My father is in the military and at the age of eight my father was posted to England. How exciting that was  for me at the time. An adventure. The first year overseas was just was I had expected. It was the first time I lived in a military community. I loved being around kids my age who all lived right next door. Because we were around so many military families many of my friends the first year I lived their moved. The families came and went in cycles. At one point there were no girls my age.  I was the 'crush' of all the boys. I was athletic, tall, lean and had gorgeous straight light brown hair. The end of the school year arrived and the following year I was going into year 5 with a new teacher. My former teacher always said things to scare my class about Mrs. Zim, the new teacher. I honestly was terrified of this new teacher. I did not want the summer to end.

            That summer, I was nine, my family went on a vacation to Scotland. On the long road trip I noticed I had begun to pull my hair. I don’t remember my ritual at the time. I remember that I was embarrassed and hid the hair deep in the car seats and looked up to see that my parents had not noticed the piles of hair that were accumulating. I was pulling from the back of my head, an area in which I haven’t pulled in many years, it is now full length and healthy. I think it was a few days later we were about to go to supper when my mother noticed my hair. She called me over and sat me on the bed. She pulled my hair back and called my father over. They were horrified and didn’t understand the large bald spot. They kept asking me why I was pulled. I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. There was no reason. I couldn’t tell them that it was because it felt good, I felt relaxed when I did it. Finally, my parents decided that I was pulling the hair due to irritation. They suggested that I pull it back into a pony-tail and on we went to supper. However, from that moment I knew something had changed. For the rest of the evening my parents looked at me and I knew they weren’t satisfied with their own answer and they knew it was something more too. 

Looking back I remember how I felt.

Ashamed
             Lost
                       Upset
                                    Embarrassed
                                                         Helpless

I often feel the same when my parents bring up my pulling now.

When school started again I had thin hair.