Bloody Roses

“Trich” as I like to call it, first began in secondary school. All of my mental illnesses emerged then, a terrible confluence of outside influence and genetic stresses.

In the late 90s, a bookish, gender non-conforming girl was not common at all, and thusly an automatic target of bullying. I suffered at least one hate crime: a thug trying to light my hair on fire.

My friends said it was something that happens and to shrug it off. It wasn’t meanness on their part, but that society at the time wasn’t likely to care much, so better not to dwell on it.

As for how genetics came in to play, nearly every woman on my father’s side of the family had/has been designated some form of crazy. Granted, plenty of this has roots in good old fashioned misogyny, but the stories I heard over the years pointed towards their being some truth to it.

One great aunt simply took to her bed for three years, refusing to leave or manage basic self care. In the days before SSRIs and therapy, plus the mere shame of mental illness being known about by the neighbours, she was simply left alone. She came out of it, luckily. So many do not. Not alive anyway.

I should’ve been luckier though, right? I lived in a slightly more enlightened time, so a depressed, withdrawn teenager tearfully explaining her misery every day should have received appropriate treatment. Right?

No. The school denied any bullying happened. My dad believed i was exaggerating and shouted at me over any lashing out I did over simply not being listened to. Later on, I discovered that he often hadn’t contacted the school at all regarding my main tormentor as he would claim when I asked.

I filed Incident Reports, which were red paper forms for people to anonymously record their suffering. I don’t know what happened to those but I wouldn’t be surprised if a paper shredder was involved.

I had one breakthrough: the vice head teacher ordered my Main Tormentor to apologise to me! Huzzah!

She went right back to making my life an utter misery the next day. But I appreciate that he tried, because barely anybody else did. He was alive last I heard of him, which was when he was quoted in a news story regarding the suicide of my old maths teacher. He was a kind man, one of the few teachers who I could say that of.

When I turned 14, something changed. I was never happy, but this was different. I wasn’t just unhappy, now I wanted to die. I imagined it all in my head: rehearsals of The Ending, The Finale, The Curtain Call. But death was scary. It is scary. Could I go through with it? Films made overdoses look almost regal, reclining delicately into eternal sleep. But I wasn’t stupid to believe that was reality.

The first time I pulled out my hair, I did it with no real thought at all. I teased and pulled a few strands of hair. Then a few more and a few more. I kept going, little bald spots appeared. I kept them to places where they were easy to disguise, no conscious planning, the mind is surprisingly complex even on autopilot. Later on, those same areas were the first to turn grey (I began greying in my mid-20s).

It was weirdly relaxing. I felt less stressed, as though something had been released and peace had finally settled in its place. It felt…nice.

And that’s how it started. And how it kept going. Eventually my parents noticed my hair looked odd, but nobody quite twigged what was wrong. Perhaps they would have, had things progressed to the point they would later on, but as fate would have it an event occurred (well, several) that got in the way of that.

I’ll focus on the one I believe had the largest effect: my Main Tormentor left the school. The story of why was a fairly delicious cake of irony: as it turned out, her own friends bullied her into leaving. In fact, it didn’t sound as though they were ever her friends, but more that she was a hanger on always trying to impress them, and ultimately she told them an unbelievably stupid lie that they uncovered.

It was funny, yes, but also I did feel the tiniest pang of sympathy. She didn’t really deserve such empathy, but there it is.

I could relate, after all.