full of moxie and viscosity

I was talking to Seth and it came up that he doesn't know what picking means. I had to try and describe it to him in some sort of careful way. He said he thought I was far too smart to deal with any emotions like that. He said he was concerned.

It became difficult to explain to him what I do and how I do it, mostly because for once, I'm actually not doing it, and with this distance from the act I see so clearly the ridiculousness of it.

I told him that on some base level, I think I'm never going to get the one thing I really want, love, and that in order to self-fulfill that prophecy I have to make myself unattractive to both myself and others: the best way I could think of to do that was to make my skin imperfect. Plus, the pain of the act took away from any sort of loneliness I may have been feeling at the time (only for those few precious seconds that I had with my fingernails under my skin)- the dissociative aspect.

I think it freaked him out, but it felt good to talk about it in the past tense. I'm still not sure I'm completely done (says the alcoholic to his bottle of Jack), but I know that I've made some serious, irreversible progress.