Roni's Story
You know, Amanda...I feel that I am a very enlightened, bright individual and I
also felt (until today) that I was some kind of freak...a total out of control woman
hiding under the veneer of a very together woman.
I have never in my life heard of other people pulling out their hair before. My sister
(who is a very popular model in Asia) came to visit me a couple weeks ago and she had made
mention that she pulls out her
eyelashes. I told her that I also used to pull mine out until I was about 15 years old.
However...I pooh-pooh'd the notion that she was a hair puller like myself. I mean, how
could someone as beautiful and worldly as her be like me?? ( have since found out that she
has the same problem..have you ever heard of two sisters having it? We weren't raised
together and didn't even meet until I was 19 and she was 17 and we both had been pulling
our hair out for years at that point!) 
I have been pulling hair since I was 9 years old. I can remember (like some
other people I have read about on your page) the first time I felt that little
"pop" and discovered that there was a root at the end! I loved it!! I ran it
across my hand feeling the coldness and slickness of it. I also tried to imagine how
something is thick as the root could
be under that little pore. Soon after, I would sit under a magnified mirror; look for the
perfect pore (usually one that would have a little sore or one that had more than two
hairs growing out of it) and pull very slowly...watching the root pull out...like some
kind of potato out of the ground! That is how my little 9 year old mind thought of it!
I am 33 years old now and have not stopped and now unfortunately pull those
horrible, nasty gray hairs from my husband's head (the "Bleeders" are the best!)
my daughter's coarse, curly, thick, black hairs (I call them the "Evil Hairs")
and even my son's fine hair. One of the rituals that I would like to add to your
list is this: I shave my 3 cats down about 3 times a year. After I shave them, I will get
my tweezers and pull the "thick hairs" or the ones that seem darker than the
others. I love my kitties to death and I don't understand why I do this.
I find that I usually pull hairs when I am driving home from work. I put my hair
up in a French Twist so that I won't do it, but inevitably, I take it down on my way home
and start pulling. I too am surprised
when I get out of the car to find out how much I pull. Amanda...as you can tell by my
picture, I have long hair and I get so many compliments on it all the time. I never
believe those compliments because no one knows that I part my hair a certain way to hide
the thinning or tease my hair at the crown to hide the patches of baldness. People love
the "sophistication" of my French Twist, but don't know that I do it, not for
the look, but to try to curb a bad habit
.
My husband has become very agitated at me and for the first time told me
unattractive it is. Of course, I become even more self conscious of it and wanted to crawl
under a rock.
A little history of myself for anyone who may read this: I am a successful
business woman; on the Board of Director's for our county's unit of the American Cancer
Society..and also their spokesperson for the
next two years; am an active member of our city's Chamber of Commerce and a volunteer for
many worthwhile organizations. The reason I am telling you this, is not to brag, but to
let others know that anyone can have this problem and that if you are one of the
unfortunate few...YOU ARE NOT CRAZY!! Until today, I thought I was the biggest liar,
because how could anyone "normal" have this. Obviously even "normal"
people do!
I found your page after reading an ad in the paper with a URL address on it for
people with "trich". Yours was one of the links on it. Thank you for creating
this page...I think I will quit writing to you and read
on and try to find out what I can do to try to stop this self destructive pattern. Thanks
again and feel free to add my picture, my URL to my web page and my letter to your list.
It was therapeutic just to write this and I truly hope to hear from you soon!
Roni
Roni's homepage: http://www.otn.net/mypage/rumor