One morning when I was about 13 years old, I was sitting on the school bus with my friend Paula…She started talking about split ends in hair and how ugly and awful they were.  I was a dorky bookwormish kid, ignorant of cosmetics and things like shaving legs and the horror of split ends.  I remember pulling my hair in front of my eyes to see what she meant (this was the era of long hair, parted in the middle).  I discovered many split ends, and thus began a long term compulsion for seeking out and destroying my split ends.  It really did turn into a sort of OCD thing for me, my personal equivalent of “cutting”…the activity became this sort of secretive indulgence in self loathing…pulling my hairs out one at a time, to ride my head of these flaws….Throughout my teenage years I spent many quiet hours involved in this during times of anxiety and stress, later the urge diminished, and for several years now, post therapy and self acceptance and meditation and just plain old getting older, it’s all gone,  But so many useless hours spent over so many years!