01/16/2026
"I'm over because this is a search for perfection, a need to smooth what felt wrong. Instead, I find pain.
Reading my skin in Braille
It always starts quietly.
A finger hovering near another, pretending to be idle. And then oh, there it is. Unavoidable. My skin insists on being noticed for its imperfections.
If you thought this was heading somewhere tender like two people, closeness, tension.....
NO. Wrong genre.
This is about fingers. Only mine. And something that pretends to be (what we find easy to call) a bad habit.This is far more intimate, and equally less beautiful and flattering. Some of you will recognize it immediately. Some of you won’t.
This is about removal. Removal of what dared to appear imperfectly in the first place. While it’s happening, it’s like I slip into a trance. The world goes on pretty much normally. Noise is there. I talk if you want, stay silent if you say so. And maybe or maybe not , for a brief moment, everything feels aligned and smooth, and as if I have earned something after all that effort , like shōkakkō , only to lose it again. And then The Treasure Hunt Begins Anew!!!.
There is a whole variety here , skin, nail, cuticle, sometimes even my lip or an old wound I refuse to let heal.
I don't choose it ,
but it has always chosen me .
Without consent. Without a will.
My thumb starts to move like I am reading Braille, searching for the slightest ridge. A raised edge. A tiny roughness too will do. And once I find it, my body and , as if, even my soul locks in with all determination I contain within. The urge sharpens and refuses to leave so quick. I scratch, bite, worry at it with a strange kind of devotion. Almost passion..." - Aamna Fatima, 19, India
Read Aamna's full powerful words at pickingme.org/shareyourstory 💖
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