The hair is gone

David Poncelow — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:31:00 +0000

Well, I shaved off my hair and my beard a couple nights ago. I was just looking too much like Bill the Cat to keep going on that way- every morning in the shower more and more hair was coming out, leaving unsightly bald patches.

I didn’t expect for the change to bother me, but I found that it did. It wasn’t a problem with losing the hair itself- it was the feeling of a loss of control that bothered me. When I was washing my hair, every time I would touch my head my hand would be covered in hair and I couldn’t get it to stop. It wasn’t coming out fast enough to finish, but that constant flow of dropping hairs made me compelled to rinse it out one more time, bringing out yet more hair.

It really seemed symbolic of the way I have felt this last week, too- unbalanced, out of control, unstable. I’ve wandered around in a bit of a haze, discouraged, frustrated, and more than a little bit testy. I’ve felt needy and clingy, and have at the same time have actively pushed people away.

I’ve also noticed a great frustration with the disparity between the way I feel and the way I look. I don’t look particularly sick, so when I don’t feel well I feel as though nobody knows. I keep looking at myself as I imagine other people see me, and since I don’t imagine myself looking poorly, I have a hard time forgiving myself for my inability to behave ‘normally’. I imagine that this will work the other way, too- as I continue to lose my hair and look more and more like a ‘cancer patient’, I imagine that there will be times that I look really poor and feel quite well. It’s really the disparity I perceive that is disconcerting and a bit disturbing.

I’m feeling better about these things- it’s easier for me when I’m able to sort them out somewhat and figure out the causes and the sometimes mistaken assumptions. I can come up with ways of changing the way I feel about these problems, ways of viewing them differently and ways of taking responsibility for changing them. When I feel poorly, it’s OK to just say so- I understand that it’s not always apparent that I’m not doing well. Everyone I deal with every day knows what’s going on and is going to be understanding- I need to have the courtesy to be understanding of myself. The way that I appear physically, good or bad, is not really what matters.

Shaving my head feels empowering. While I still have a voice saying ‘isn’t that a bit extreme?’, I don’t have the frustration in the shower in the morning. I’ve acknowledged that it’s happening, and that I don’t have full control over it- it happens on it’s own time. Like so many things in this situation, I don’t have control over everything. But I do have control over the way that I deal with and approach my challenges.

Z80 - The Diagnosis Is Not Consistent With The Gender of the Patient: Tag hair

The hair is gone