^^ My lovely scabs!!
Okay, story time.
Once upon a time there was a little girl, who went out in a dingy with her boyfriend. It was a sunny day and it was all fun and games until she capsized... When in the water the little girl realised she could not touch the bottom!!! In a panic the little girl tryed to pull herself up the concrete embankment but with no ground to push on the she ended up falling back into the water twice! Eventually she pulled herself up with sheer adrenaline and panic cutting her legs in several places... And that, friends, is how I got these scabs!
Now, as exciting as my misadventures are, I want to focus a little part of my life with OCD. My OCD comes in many quirks, but one is a fixation with picking scabs. 'But Deanna!' I hear you cry, 'Everyone likes a good pick every now and then.' True, most people pick scabs, squeeze spots and scratch bites, but most people don't think about it everytime they see a pimple, or squeeze/scratch until nothing but raw skin is left and I'm pretty sure most people don't continue to pick scabs after they are already bleeding heavily! The problem with OCD is that fixations don't consider 'what's good for you'. Once I start, I just can't stop!
During my iffy sixth form years, I developed a sort of 'self-harm tic'. I had an OCD urge to scratch my skin off of my wrists and hands. I don't do it anymore but it was like a release. The movement of my nails across my skin felt uncontrollable and the pain only made the anger behind the obsession worse. I was truly out of control. Over time, therapy (and not being in school) helped me to overcome this particular obsession and I can honestly say it's not been an issue since I was about 17.
So to my current scabs. On my legs there are a few individual cuts and a couple of grazes. All of them are only surface wounds and would be unlikely to cause a scar (if I could just leave the damn things alone!) The thing is, I can't stop thinking about them, I'm constantly touching my shins, rolling up my trousers and gingerly scratching around the scabs to try and release the urge. It's very frustrating. I've even tryed softening the scabs with Vaseline to make it harder to peel them! I'm not totally aware that I'm doing it either, I keep fiddling with my leg only to realise half way through a scab that that's why my leg hurts! Once I'm halfway through a scab I have to take the whole thing off, no matter how much blood and pain it causes, that's just the way my OCD works.
My leg is bleeding again as I type and I wonder if I'll ever be able to develop a less painful strategy for dealing with my scabby fixation! At the moment I'm a tad reliant on others telling me off for picking so if you see me poking at a scab feel free to slap my wrists!!