There are very few things I feel shame about and keep under wraps — just ask anyone who's had a couple glasses of wine in my company. But my 13-year struggle to get my dermatillomania — a compulsive skin-picking disorder I've been diagnosed with — under control is one. Physically, skin-picking is an ugly habit. But to me, what it broadcasts about my mental state is even uglier: that I'm weak, anxious, neurotic, not in control.I can count on one hand the number of people who know how deep into this disorder I am — and I've learned not to talk about it. Because when you tell people you pick, you get one of two responses: "Oh, me too, I can't resist popping pimples!" Or, "You just have to not do it. Force yourself to stop." Which is usually where the conversation ends, because this has never been about acne or free will. That, and it's pretty socially awkward to counter with "No, as in, I sit in my bathroom for hours on end digging into my body, going after tiny specks that could maybe, one day, weeks from now, be hairs, with sharp tools until I bleed, scab, and scar. And then I do it all over again. By the way, how's your salad?"I started picking between eighth and ninth grade for reasons I can't pinpoint now, but it's not uncommon for compulsive tendencies to develop around the onset of puberty, when our hormones are raging.During high school, my legs got the worst of it. I'd lock myself in the bathroom, settle in on the toilet seat, and pull out every hair on my leg I could grasp with those pointed Tweezerman tweezers. The ones I couldn't get? I'd take a safety pin and cut into the hair follicle until I reached them. I'd fall into a trance doing this and lose track of time — it wasn't unusual for three hours to pass before I gave up, flushed a trash can's worth of bloody tissues, and went to bed, sore from hunching over and squinting.Needless to say, I spent California summers in jeans, always, and school years in knee socks. (Luckily, all my time was spent at a barn riding horses or in Catholic school, so both clothing items worked well within the respective uniform guidelines of each.) When there was a dance or track meet and I was forced into a dress or shorts, I relied on lots of Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs.When I headed to college, the picking stopped for almost a year, my scars faded, and I figured I was in the clear. I credited finally being free of the constraints of my parents' home (they were great; I was a difficult teen) and being surrounded by people 24/7 as the solution. But I eventually relapsed, and when I did, it was on a less readily visible area:my bikini line.