Trichotillomania Wins Again

Exercise I: When did you first experience the urge to pull?

"Quit sticking your dick in crazy, Cooper."
"Don't I know it, brother."
"No more self-destructive moods, late night setbacks and wasted days."
"Amen to that, and peace on Earth."
"Good, now you're straight, and it's time to get a job."
"I'm on Indeed as we speak."
"That's not enough. Get out there and start beating down doors!"
"What doors? Whose doors? Where do I even begin?"
"Downtown. The business district. Skyscrapers. Just get off your ass and get out there."
"Get out there? But that's how I ended up with my dick in crazy to begin with. I'm feeling a mini-crisis coming on. I gotta pull!"
"No, god dammit, not now!"
"Ooh, if I could just get this little dangler, it pops and toggles right on the end of my brow. I just want it to dance on the tip of my finger: it's tough and more calcified than the rest! It's own smell, it's own character, to flex and to fiddle, to pull between my pointer and middle."
"You're fucking hopeless. Go to the gym."
"That's all I can do now. They denied me at Barnes & Noble; they won't even let me sell books."
"You never could."
"That's not the point. The idea used to be there at least, and now they've taken the very idea from me, too."
"It's all ideas with you, that's all it ever has been. Ideas and no motivation, no urgency, no desire."
"Fine, I'll go to the gym, but it's hard to work out. Too many cream ales on Friday night and fell off my bike. Hurt my left hip, left shoulder and left ankle. Ran into a curb, tipped over and crushed everything on that side."
"Jesus christ, why don't you just stick to pulling your eyebrows out on Friday nights?"
"I'll be back to myself soon enough. I'm going to get a job at the dispensary, so long as they reply to my application. Then I'll stop drinking cream ales and running my bike into the curb."
"How can you be so sure? You'll be just as bored in a dispensary as you are in a cube."
"But I'll be higher and doing my part for my local fellows." 

Exercise II: What are the locations you are most likely to pull?

Cooper knew nothing about where he was going or why. One place was as good as another, so long as he didn't end up in jail or six feet under. But to him, it felt like everything was drawing to a close. Now in his late thirties, youth was only painfully near memory, haunted by specters of disappointed loves, lost friends and plans gone awry. 

But still, he thought if he could get out just one last time and surround himself with people in a place that felt good, that he might just have one last chance at it: a thriving professional life that trickled down into domestic bliss. He still felt he could fill a hard minute with sixty seconds of distance run, but did anyone else still recognize that strength in him?   

Trying to find his people, waiting to be discovered, wandering. At the end of it all, he was simply a romantic who was destined to be alone. No person, place or job could bring an end to his grueling need to pay an exacting severance that was never there to begin with. 

Struggling to get his plants to grow, a few struggling with life itself, and these damn Visa gift cards always have something like three dollars left on them but you can't bring yourself to toss 'em out.  

There's a bad eye on him. Cooper's convinced it's so. Maybe he should sharpen up his tattoos, maybe everything will change with a new shirt, maybe he's praying you don't look at him, regardless, there's no way he's looking back at you.  

The eye doesn't seem to leave him alone, so the location is everywhere. Keep the hands busy: go to the gym, boy. At least shower. In the shower, thoughts come easy and motivation seems to spring forth. It's just that first step onto the shower mat when it all evaporates like steam, leaving you cold and lifeless.  

Every car cuts him off. Everyone in the right lane is just bidding their time until he approaches, then they suddenly need to be where he is. It's the same on the streets. The sidewalks are empty until he approaches, then they're overcrowded. The eye is on him, rejoicing in the success of it's stress. It's feeding and eating well.  

Out there nothing can get done. Ennui strikes and he wants to dive down where no one can see and close himself off, shut off the thoughts, leave it all behind. That's the only location where the urge to pull can't follow. It's left inside with the thoughts, the motivations and the worldly things, while out here you're free to sink. Cooper needs to suffer a miniature death to stop the pulling, and those only last so long. 

Exercise III: What are the activities, positions or situations you feel tempted to pull? 

Cooper's walking down Central hating his shirt, his hair, his face. Nothing's come through, and he's feeling worse for wear. No Barnes & Nobles book sales, no dispensary cash register, no Salvation Army rebirth through the blood and fire of coordinating services. No one will have him. He's run the entire gamut and every single organization has declined without the slightest bit of acknowledgment. 

Here was the universe and its message: "Who let you out of middle school? You have no place here. Be gone." 

West down Lowry he went, hurting all over, ego bashed and without a prospect in the world to cling to. Cooper had been alone for a long time, and the hurt that came with it came in waves, but he'd learned to recognize the need for another was always quickly and strongly displaced by a desire to be alone. That desire felt stronger, truer, and so he was learning to ignore the brief periods when the call for another attempted to assert itself at the very top of his hierarchy of needs. 

But he just couldn't be alone now, not as such a total failure. He daren't add the ingredient of self-imposed isolation to this abominable cocktail, so he headed towards his local. It was either drink at the bar or go home, sit on the couch and pull all night. He was helping himself by hurting himself, or so Cooper quickly rationalized before any hazard lights could begin flashing in his mind's eye. 

There was nothing going on inside, there never was at 7 p.m., but a barfly can imagine all kinds of things are starting to fall into place and about to happen after a gin and tonic. So Cooper was staring into space as the place seemed to get that little bit of something it was missing, when he started overhearing the conversation of three women from a table in the corner mixed with all the other dialogue around the bar.

"Yeah, well, I got arrested driving my daughter and her friends back from a Bone Thugs concert in Wisconsin."
"They're frustrating as hell, the way they win fives games in a row then lose five."
"A lot of sex that night. Well, I was only with one guy, but this hoe here, she was with a few..."
"Shot of Bulleit and a Coors, please."
"Right there at that counter is where the pool table used to be."
"Elenna? I don't know, she might be working tonight."
"Baby, what do you mean, 'I don't care.' I'm right here, ain't I?"
"If all your money's spent, let me buy you a drink."
"Just know what you were doing is wrong."
"I never paid attention to my horoscopes; I was always listening to the trees." 
"Love is a soldier who's served too much time in the trenches: it comes back but it's never the same."
"Have a drink! It's my birthday! No? Why not? You must already be dead inside."  

Exercise IV: What are the moods that seem to be most connected with pulling?

Risking it all, feeling quite nice after a day of variety. But then it all comes back again; wondering if you're bipolar or just an abject failure. The grief comes around every morning: the anxieties and worries of unfulfillment rage like clockwork around then. But that's then and this is now. He's moved on from "I can't take anymore" to "I don't give a damn."

Life feels like one giant gestalt experiments. One day it's only pain, misery and the realization of a transitory nature that's always bringing us further away from our last happiness. No matter how hard we squint, we can't get it to change. 

"You must already be dead inside."

And all the days added up and amounted to this one, and all the tomorrows will be no different.

"You must already be dead inside."    

Then suddenly, a bolt from the blue: with the exact same nature constituting life, the image shifts. It's forever hopeful, loving and exciting. In this new light, we can't understand how we ever saw it any other way.

The truth is that both realities are only a heartbeat away. It's all on the other side of a closed eye.  

Exercise V: What are the physical sensations most connected with pulling? 

So he's moving east, uphill on Lowry long after nightfall. A streetlight is knocked out and Cooper looks up at the moon and stars, feeling like early man and the cosmos. "Maybe this is what zen feels like," he thinks. "But it's more likely I'm just a lightweight."

But he momentarily forsakes his status as a modern man and says a heartfelt prayer to the hunter and the little dipster.

"Oh, you great wandering nether light. If I fall through the constellations, will I end up right back where I started? ... I hope this prayer reaches you before the supernova."

The stars glimmer and Cooper is sure that, for once, his prayer was heard. 

He hears a crow caw, wonders how long it'll be until the rising sun and thinks that maybe, maybe he could be happy if he'd only think of the right things to say.