i don't want to do that anymore. i don't deserve to deprive myself of anything that is good and healthy for me. i need to stop starving the girl i never got to be of the love and acceptance my parents never gave. i love me. i accept me.

thus, this bsky account. thus this thread.

it's very likely this ghost-girlhood clawing around for dopamine, for a sense of pride and relief. i so often deprive myself of any sense of satisfaction or taking credit for something good that happens in my life, even if i was the one to choose it in the first place.

i've said elsewhere that one of the major reasons taylor swift's music finally clicked with me is because i was starting to nurture the girl in me who never got a chance to exist because of Many Traumatic Things. i have been home to a phantom girlhood for decades, a little ghost in my shell.

which leads back to adhd, the incessant hunt for dopamine, or a feeling of success (not bleeding). which leads to a discussion i had in therapy last week: i need to validate myself more. i need to give myself more credit more often. i need to be good to me the way my parents never were.

i'm more aware of this habit now because of my job, which is on its way to becoming my career. i can't have little wounds on my fingers when i'm counting scrips. i can't chew on my fingers when i'm around people who have just become diagnosed with the goddamn flu.

which isn't to say i like doing it. of course i don't. i can't remember a time when my fingers were never without a wound. i don't like that. i would love to look at my hands and have the skin be uniformly smooth, free anything that i can snag my teeth on.

my moods in the moment they happen aren't actively anything. i don't feel consciously anxious. i'm not frustrated; i don't feel bored or overwhelmed--i'm not aware of feeling anything before i do it or when i do it. i only feel the tiniest gasp of pride after i do it and i don't bleed.

i know that if i start to feel a burning pain, i'm pulling too much and too far. i know what shade of pink means my finger will bleed, or if it will only be bared raw. i know there are times i have to physically fight my hand away from my mouth because i simply just can't stop.

all i know is i can look at my cuticle, be overwhelmed with the desire to pull skin between my teeth, and then there we are--skin on tongue, blood in mouth. i do have some awareness about the process. i know it requires a delicate touch to pull on the skin just enough so i don't bleed.

tw: self harm,,,

--

it's not at all like when i would hurt myself. bfrb--in my case, chewing on and ripping my cuticles and the skin around them--is not something i deliberately prepare for, commit, and clean up after. it's something i do without any awareness of why i want to.

granted i can't remove any of my disorders from my brain, i can only restructure how i handle them. i feel sufficiently equipped to do that with anxiety, a little less confident but still capable when bpd episodes happen, weaker but still persistent when parental trauma is triggered--not so the bfrb

Lots of typos in this thread. But that's okay, I guess the point came across

I would like to get better at it. I would like to become aware of what I'm starting it so I can stop it because I can't remember a time when my fingers were all one uniform color. I can't remember a time when there has not been at least a little part of my skin that was there to bite.

I typed all that while scratching at my cheek and picking at something that was very likely a part I already picked at, so now I have blood pooling on my face and on my fingertips. It honestly seems to happen anytime I have to talk about myself in any open way. Alsoever ever-present anxiety.

Why am I posting an unsexy thing here? Well it has to do with how I treat my body, and how I have treated my body. There are times of the month that it becomes worse than it usually is, and I can't really think of a trigger for it at this point. It's just standard behavior.

Followed by the less tit..illating me.