So life is going great, I was on vacation for the past 10 days and had my family over the past 2 weeks.  I'm back to work today but all I am doing is desk warming which means I'll probably do some working out because I am in the English building completely alone, not even Lester the rat is here to keep me company today.

 I'm motivated to exercise especially with all this space available, however, I always feel run down and hungry at the moment with nausea on top, but I must find my motivation again!!! Caffeine wouldn't hurt either! I just paid for 1 month of premium service for my fitness pal, because today I am taking this Macros thing seriously. Using macros to burn fat is a lot more lenient than you think, you are allowed to indulge as long as you can fit it in your daily macros which is freaking awesome! I've noticed I'm eating way too many carbs it seems, despite my breakfast being one piece of brown bread with PB and a banana. My lunch is gluten free brown rice pasta with tuna, plain yogurt and a little mayo mixed in. Dinner is going to have to be carb free I think and I need to eat more protein!!!!  (Taco seasoned baked chicken breast with steamed broccoli anyone?)
Sadly due to the bird flu epidemic here eggs have gotten too expensive *cries* I would like to change my breakfast to poached eggs and toast if possible!

Anywho, I am not here to touch too much on diet and exercise, even though it is encouraged in helping with TTM and my other disorders. I am here to report on my progress. Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since I stopped pulling completely and it has been 2 weeks since I shaved my head, I've been using the castor + coconut oil mask and just after 2 weeks there's been miraculous results, they speak for themselves. However I am a little concerned, the hair that is growing, is growing fast healthy and thick, I feel my head is looking gappy and lacking hair, I'm hoping this is because it's still early days and hair renewal for more damaged hair may take longer to grow. I pray I haven't done any real serious damage and my hair catches up.


I really don't know where I am finding this strength to not pull, I have had urges but I've been able to say to myself no, I want to grow my hair out and I don't feel it anymore. I feel like something inside me has lost the fight to make me pull, I am really not finding it difficult yet, but I am also not really working right now, throw in stress and worry again and It's possible it may return, although, it's difficult to pull with my hands, only with tweezers on this length of hair right now which I guess is good it means its only half the battle. I am also avoiding mirrors when going to the bathroom because my head close up opens up the opportunity to notice hairs that stand out and that of course means wanting to pull.

I only have desk warming this week tomorrow and Thursday then its a Korean holiday woooo until Tuesday which means more desk warming, also tomorrow is payday which means I can buy some adventure time and gudetama work stationary in downtown and buy a new and affordable wig! Wooo!!!! I've decided now I'm open about my disorder and wigs, I'm going to have fun with it and invest in a few colored wigs, I got my eye on a rose gold one and a grey one, I'm also going to look into some turquoise and blue ones.


Oh and I'm off travelling by myself in 3 weeks. my motivation to work out is just to lean out a tad, I don't expect much in 3 weeks but let's see what I can achieve in a safe and healthy way for the beaches of Boracay and Bali. (More will reported on my trip on my travel blog.)

So I introduce to you a fidget cube!

This is the one I mentioned in an earlier post that I had ordered. But this is one from eBay, not from the original creators, they are having issues with productions and thousands of pledgers are still waiting for theirs, only some have gotten their orders so far. I hear though these cheap knock offs can vary in quality from cheap and awful to close but not perfect replicas.

If you don't know what one is here's a short video on the original.

So I went through with the shave, pic is below. I feel so empowered by it and the shame and embarrassment of my hair has gone.

What made me do it? Refer to my last blog post I listed reasons why I wanted to do it.

Do I regret it? Absolutely not, in fact I wish I didn't spend years  umming and ahhhing about it and just went ahead and did it. I want to say thanks to my boyfriend for making me feel more empowered and confident about myself than I have ever felt before.

So now its shaved, I am not yet brave enough to go out in public exposed, so I will stick to wigs until it gets to an "acceptable" length in Korea. I live in a country of vanity and group mentality, when someone looks different here it's automatically seen as a negative thing. Which is also why I wear wigs to work.

I did notice that once my hair was shaved how sore and red my scalp was,  I noticed all the pull sites have scabbing and dry skin (eeeew) I had not seen this before, but it made me realize just how badly damaged my scalp was from pulling out my hair. So now I am dedicating my free time to nourishing and caring for my scalp and hair, which includes hair masks, massages and hair oil treatments.

My hair grows pretty fast like I'm sure I've mentioned so many times before, but I feel 16 years of pulling out my hair could have some lasting damage on my hair growth.
Since I was a kid my mum used to rub coconut oil in my hair and fresh aloe vera plant on my scalp, so I grew up with real awesome hair (before I decided to rip it out).

 I heard recently from the TTM community that castor oil is a miracle oil for hair growth because it promotes circulation, makes hair grow back faster, renews roots faster and hair is all round healthier and thicker. Some have mentioned an increase in amount of hair on their head. So I'm going to give it a try, bald or not I think its a great way to promote healthier hair.

The video is below on how to make your own hair mask. It's recommended to apply it twice a week and within a month results are rather noticeable, but I heard it being as soon as 2 weeks. I've got coconut oil and I applied it after my shower yesterday to help relieve the dry skin. Coconut oil is a multi-purpose product so it not only nourishes hair, it moisturizes and is also an antibacterial. WIN!!

I've been contemplating this for years, and after this weekends positive events, I have made the decision to  do a full  shave of my head. I figured I am doing so well without pulling my hair out, why not reinforce it further by shaving it,  theres so many pros to why I think I should do this.

So the weekend has been and gone, I must say its been rather stressful, I woke up at 6.30am Saturday morning to travel 3 and half hours to the airport to pick up my brother and dad, and meet my least favourite aunt to give her stuff my mum packed for her (which was a lot of stuff by the way). After faffing around trying to locate someone that had no wifi, but kept sending me text messages knowing full aware I had no credit on my phone to reply, it was agitating. We finally unpacked and gave her stuff and we took the 2 o clock bus back. We arrived in Gwangju at almost 6pm and we grabbed a cab to downtown looked around bought some food and walked for what felt like an eternity and waited for a bus back to Hwasun. I guess journeys feel longer when you are in a rush and/or tired and just wanna head home, eat and get comfortable, or in my case get ready to head out.

So as you can imagine I was extremely tired when I went back out and hadn't eaten properly all day from the hectic schedule so naturally I was knocking back alcohol because I was happy, but I also got drunk so quickly. I ended up feeling really tired and drunk for the whole night, which also meant only one thing, drunkness and tiredness is a disaster waiting to happen.

My boyfriend I headed home when the night was over, I was feeling rather emotional and crying a bit, him being the amazing person that he is, he gave me words of comfort and support I have not experienced from anyone before, no one has shown me kindness, understanding and immense amounts of support like he has.
He knows the right things to say and how to instantly make me feel better, usually I don't believe peoples words of support because they feel fake and not heartfelt. But not once has he ever done that, I don't know how he does it but he just naturally spoke to me in a way that I found was comfortable and easy to open with, I never felt ashamed, embarrassed or shy to talk about TTM, my hair, the fact I wear a wig with him (I really hate saying the word, I literally get embarrassed, but nope not once with him did I even cringe about it), it was an epiphany for me. I knew this guy loved me but to what extent can you love someone who suffers from several mental illnesses and feel like they are losing grasp with reality?  But I knew in that moment that when he said he loved me he meant it, this love ran deep it wasn't superficial and shallow, he genuinely wanted to do everything for me to be comfortable, happy and supported, even if that meant seeing me with no wig on. I have always felt too ashamed to shown anyone (except my family) my natural hair but the fact he loved me that much and wanted me to feel comfortable around him no matter what, that was the lightbulb moment for me.

I felt it within my soul this guy knows what he's got into and that hasn't scared him away, lost interest etc. I know everyone has their hangups on themselves, we are own critics after all, but this for me is life changing. I don't think I have loved anyone like I love this man. I know this is the guy I will spend my life with and possibly have kids with in the future.  I have so much respect and love for this man I would be a fool to let this guy go.

So I'm feeling a lot better than last week, feelings will not completely leave but right now I am on the uprise of positivity because he has helped me discover this new found strength within myself. I don't know what I did to deserve such a perfect person, but I am grateful he came into my life at the right time.

I've been following the 5 day course that is recommended to do whilst using the Pavlok and todays task was to write down the following answers to these questions: Pros of stopping the bad habit, Cons of stopping the bad habit, Pros of continuing the habit, Cons of Continuing the habit.

So last night my tear ducts went into over drive, I was consumed by negative thoughts and I was, lets be honest a huge mess.  I couldn't function properly and all I could  do was lie in bed like a pathetic human being and cry like a baby. Yeah just like a baby,  the flooding of tears and whiney-ness. I'm usually a silent crier but last night I had hit rock bottom, I let it all out for a good 40 minutes.  I have not been in that way for a long time, I cried so hard I could have easily cried through the night and I am pretty sure my neighbors could hear me. I didn't care about that I was so stuck in this moment of defeat, I was at loss with myself, I felt completely helpless and I just felt nothing but pure hatred for myself and  I was so upset because there is nothing I could do about it.

I'm just writing this post off the cuff right now, I don't know why, but I just need to vent somewhere. I'm hysterically crying which for me is rather odd, and I don't know if this is hormones or what. But I just took a test for BDD from an official website for OCD. I mean I kinda had an inkling from the onset of my TTM around 11, that I had an extreme dislike for myself and my appearance, I was never complimented at school I always felt ugly and fat and I was so much slimmer back then, I felt like shit anyways, no one made me feel good, the only thing that ever happened to me was the constant interrogation of my appearance, why this? why that? blah blah blah.

So I guess its no surprise when everyone arounds you confirms that you need to lose weight and when you lose the weight you are told "you don't suit being fat", "you look great since you lost weight" or "you lost so much weight but you should lose more so you can look like a model". Which is true, at the time though I still felt like I wasn't good enough, I look back now and would do ANYTHING to look like that again, I mean ANYTHING!!! Now I am just constantly reminded in the country of pure vanity that I am fat beyond belief, you try be friends with Korean girls and not feel self conscious about your appearance, when they are literally perfection. Or when all you hear from dudes how they only like Korean girls, you be around these sort of people long enough and you want to be them and fuck I wanna be them, they're the epitome of beauty, why would any dude have an interest in a fat western girl when you got slender, perfect skin, gorgeous hair, stunning faced Korean girls everywhere.

Here I am again as mentioned in my last post I spoke about the Pavlok, well I ordered one because I did some extra online teaching and well this isn't a splurge it's a necessity in my eyes, like I said, I am willing to try anything and I'm sure most TTM sufferers can also agree they feel the same way when it comes to managing TTM.

So here it is, naturally I went for Pink it's my all time favourite colour. They have various other colours, I also got 2 free wristbands they had blue, black and grey. I took the blue and black, they were free so why not?

I've put on the wristband and its weird to say the least because I'm used to wearing my Fitbit but to be also wearing one on my right arm for me is rather bizarre. So far so good, I'm getting used to how it works and such. I've downloaded the app, I am getting the hang of it. I zapped myself once for a tester, the other 2 two times was because the first time I pulled and the second time I had the urge to pull. I like that there's a course you follow and that it shows when you are most prevalent in your behaviours, however you got to log these yourself and it doesn't log them for you.

I've also come to realise you will not be zapped automatically, i guess this is because if it makes an error in your movements you will be getting shocked. I have noticed it has been vibrating a hell of a lot, when my hand is stationary or moving around a bit, I am hoping this is due to the fact the battery may need charging and not just poor craftsmanship, if not I may just switch it back to manual, which may lose its effectiveness.

These are just early thoughts on the tracker so far, you can set it to behaviours of your choice whether it be smoking, eating sugar etc. You can also set the strength of the vibrations and shocks and how many times they occur in one trigger, there is also a beep option but I don't really see myself using it.

I'm experimenting for the next few days to get the hang of it, I am also going to see if I can also at the same time condition myself to exercise and stop craving sugar or if this is solely just one behaviour at a time sort of deal.

I am fully aware the only time I pull is when I am alone, in bed. So I will not be wearing it in the day just when I get home from work, if that proves ineffective then of course I will wearing it consistently.

Please note though they cant be worn in the shower or any environment which will have contact with water so don't go swimming with it!!!

Will report again soon!!!

P.S. Still no sign of my fidget cube :(