Compulsively picking at my lips today, as I’ve done most days since I was a teenager. I don’t remember exactly when or why it started, but I know that it hasn’t stopped yet. I’m hoping it will one day. Maybe I’ll live with it my whole life, but I’ll try not to. I’ll try harder than I’ve tried so far, which is not very hard.
It’s a disorder called dermatillomania, and it’s sort of embarrassing to talk about. I don’t know why I’m talking about it now, other than the fact I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I sat down to write. I’d just applied lip balm, and I knew that I didn’t want to do it, yet there I was (yet again).
These moments are the weakest I ever feel, apparently powerless to this act that I’m performing myself—to myself; on myself. I’ll add it to the list of things I should speak with a therapist about. Humans are so amazing and so capable (and so capable of change), but I suspect many of us have something like this that holds a strange power over us.
Procrastinating at precisely the wrong time.
Staying up late when you’re exhausted.
Replaying an embarrassing moment.
Doomscrolling when you’re sad.
Picking at your cuticles.
You know you’re not supposed to do it, and yet you do it. You know it will cause you some future pain, and yet here you are. They might not be all-the-time things, they might just be sometimes things, but I suspect that many of us experience this moment of apparent powerlessness.
I’m writing this when I should be doing something else, in fact, and on that note I’ll stop and I’ll start doing the other thing instead. Occasionally your mind will let you choose, even when it doesn’t necessarily want to. I’ll take those moments when I can find them; I’ll take this one right now.