trying again

[musician]

Well, when the new year started, I stopped picking. I made it through four days without picking, which is probably the longest in I don't know how many years...

But then I started touching my skin. At first, it was just the scabs that were healing and flaking (due to not picking); I just played with them, almost teasing myself, thinking that if I didn't scratch the scab off, then I wasn't really picking. Yeah, right.

I realized what I was doing once I pulled off the first scab, and managed to control myself again until the next day. But then it was over, and I methodically picked all the places that had been begging for my fingers for the past few days.

Almost two more weeks of picking have gone by, and it's really taken a toll on my skin: my scalp is raw, I have cuts/exposed flesh on my fingers, and I've probably stained yet another shirt with blood from picking my back (but I didn't look to see...)

Definitely, I've been stressed recently; school isn't going too well, and I've been avoiding doing the things I know I need to do. That surely contributes to my level of picking.

Anyway, I'm writing today both to get this off my chest, and to start anew. Here I go...

[Secret]

I know exactly how it feels to need to peel off a scab, and I know all about going right at it again after you've peeled it off. When you take the scab off it's still not healed completely, it's still something to be picked at, and so we start the whole cycle over again. Madness! The best thing to do is not touch our skin at all. HANDS FREE ZONE! I swear picking really is like alcoholism..one drink, yeah right! We can't just have one pick, it just gets worse and worse, so that's why we need to trust in the emptiness of no solution. What we have thought to be solutions aren't. Like trying to fix the television with the hammer.