Since I have a little problem with people who are confident and have their shit together (hatred), I've been thinking of joining one of the many support groups that regularly advertise for new members on Craigslist and other community bulletin boards. Technically I don't suffer from any of the problems that have spawned support groups (my problems are thus far unlisted) but I think I pick up on the common denominator of these ads, the subtext, which is that everyone everywhere has terrible debilitating defects and burdens that are sources of immense shame and harrowing isolation, which if unaddressed can lead to insanity or antisocial behavior or being a little sadder or not as chatty and self-revealing as one would like, and that the thing to do is to find fellow sufferers, I mean survivors, and to commiserate on a weekly basis in a circle of metal folding chairs. (Apparently this takes place quite often in "church basements," which for me is about as inviting a location as "pitch black crawlspace in an abandoned sanitarium.") So it's not all that important to get bogged down in specifics; problems are problems, to be overly nitpicky about whether or not I actually suffer from compulsive hair-pulling (trichotillomania) is beside the point. What is "pulling," when you really get down to it, and what is "hair"? These are merely words. Everything's a word. "Murder." "Fudge." One person's "pulling" is pulling, another person's might be worrying, or eating, or suicidal ideations, or shopping, while one person's "hair" is indeed hair whereas for another person "hair" might be food, or drugs, or a brood of screaming brats whose very existence one regrets with every fiber of one's being, or a counterproductive attitude with coworkers, or secret jaunts to Vegas for gambling and hookers, or what have you. The point is everyone likes to share and talk about themselves and nod with a slightly tilted head when others talk and maybe cover someone's hand with their own when the tears begin, and if a few local hair-pullers feel less alone then who really loses? I may not be a puller but I certainly have my own issues, some of them quite spectacularly humiliating. The group dynamic is the same across the board so what difference does it make? There's no local group for people who can't touch paper after washing their hands because doing so will make them totally freak out, or people who flinch at noises that aren't even that loud, or shellfish phobics, or liquoroholics. Why reinvent the wheel and maybe sit alone in some scary church basement watching the 2-liter Diet Sprite go flat and feeling horrible waves of religion radiating from the walls and floorboards when I can just join the thriving male incest survivors group and adjust my terminology a little? I mean the group is thriving, not the survivors, although they might be thriving too for all I know. They probably aren't, they're probably tormented and consumed with guilt and unacknowledged rage, and I can be there for them, mentally substituting "lobster" when I hear "father." Let the healing begin.