The fatigue came first, crashing into me and pulling me underwater, caught in its current. It came seemingly from nowhere and remained. I trudged through the relentless fog of my relationship, bearing the responsibility of trying to find Sam and I a home, to merge our lives, while sitting with the uncertainty of our future. I started having doubts about his lack of ambition. He was a dreamer, but lacked drive, often needing me to execute his plans. Something was changing between us. The fantasy of what we imagined for ourselves, not living up to the reality of what was.
The depression soon followed like a familiar friend who I had hoped to leave behind. I turned to food to soothe me as it had for many years before, but it betrayed my trust, twisting my insides and making me sick. Something was changing inside of me, my body out of my control. I yearned for Sam to comfort me, to still desire me, but he pulled away more. Is it because I gained weight? Are you not attracted to me anymore? Questions carefully avoided with the cliche “It's not you, it’s me”.
When my fingers turned white, I thought it was from the cold, my warm-blooded body not yet adjusted to the seasonal change. But when my hair began to fall, I realized something deeper was at play, something was wrong. I watched chunks of my hair come out in the shower, on my hair brush, while sitting on the couch frozen in fear. The more I panicked, the more my hair fell, a nefarious trick played by spikes of cortisol. My hair became brittle and dry. I was afraid to touch it, to put it up, or leave it down. It thinned to a tiny ponytail, losing a third of its original thickness.
My hair used to be long. It cascaded past my shoulders in an erratic way. Some strands were wavy, while others formed tendrils that I would wrap around my fingers in delight. I didn’t have the best hair by most standards, but it was mine. Fine in texture, soft to the touch, and often frizzy in the humid Florida heat. My hair was easy, never having to style it, nor wanting to. I let it air dry and put minimal product on it to contain its sometimes wild shape. I used to dye it, a balayage of blond beachy streaks naturally coursing through. It allowed me this, and did not break under the pressure of the lowlights and highlights. Most importantly though, my hair was strong, rooted deep into my scalp, never wavering aside from the natural ebb and flow of its life cycle.
Hair is not just hair. It is a physical representation of my identity, an ability to control my outward appearance, a privilege I didn’t have until late in elementary school. As a child, my dad decided this for me. No matter how much I protested, he would take my sister and I to the hairdresser and instructed him to cut our hair short. Boy short. I yearned to have long hair like my friends, to get to style it in ponytails and braids. I cried every time we left the salon, feeling the incongruence of what I looked like and how I so desperately wanted to feel.
In time, I regained this control. Mostly because my dad tired of the fight and became less interested in my life as I grew older. I was able to grow my hair out and even dyed the ends red in sixth grade, like Christina Aguilera. I felt powerful. I swore I would never have short hair again and would hold onto this feminine feeling forever.
But at the age of thirty-four, I lost my hair and I lost my health. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid. My entire life changed and I was at its whim. I read every book, listened to every podcast I could find on my disease, determined to heal myself at any cost.
“You’re obsessed”, Sam would tell me; neither of us expecting to make space for this new, unwanted part of me.
I tried to be “normal” and move through life, to grow this relationship while I fell apart. I went to Sam’s friends’ house for dinner; friends he reconnected with since his divorce, friends that were closely tied to his ex-wife and his former life. I made a quinoa salad to bring: roasted broccoli and sweet potato, air fried tofu and chickpeas, tossed with greens, quinoa, dried cranberries, and my renowned tahini dressing. As Sam went to serve himself, I noticed a strand of my hair peeking out from the bowl. I tried to stealthily pluck it out, but was fully exposed. My face flushed with vulnerability and I swallowed my heart. His friends were kind, insisting it wasn’t a big deal.
“Did you brush your hair in the salad?” Sam quipped, as he noticed yet another hair. I winced, never revealing the depth of his cut.
As the weeks went on, my symptoms worsened and revealed new truths. I laid in a fetal position on the couch, ensnared by depression, uncontrollably crying over nothing and everything all at once. Patches of psoriasis fed on my scalp and I silently prayed for it to consume the rest of me. I warned Sam I was not in a good place, but he insisted on coming over, wanting to be there for me in my depressed state. I paused, uncertain as to whether I could tolerate him seeing me this way, but took the risk. When he came through the door I was unable to move, tears pooled heavily in my eyes. He suggested we go to a museum and get out of the house, not seeing the shackles that kept me bound. He came bearing “treats”: two protein bars, and a chocolate bar that I could not eat; the same chocolate bar he had bought twice before; the same one that read in big bold letters, CONTAINS: WHEAT.
I attempted to communicate, but feared I was too much. This is the best relationship you’ve been in, I’d repeat to myself; a compelling enough case for why to stay. Sam claimed to hear me, to want to try, but his ego heard my needs as failures of his own; failures that I needed to console. He longed to go back to the beginning, when everything was “fun”. But being with a sick person is sometimes “not fun”-a cruel truth he would later admit for his emotional withdrawal. A truth that reverberated through my bones and fractured my self-worth. My disease made me sick, but my relationship made me sicker. And so, I ended it, because he could not.
This was my season of shedding. My time to let go of everything misaligned. I’d sank to the depths of the ocean, forgetting I could swim. It was time to salvage the parts of myself that had shrunk and faded over time. To take my first step; to take my first breath; to cut off my hair and reclaim a life I once knew.
My hair appointment fell on Valentine’s Day- an act of self-love and a twisted joke from the universe. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry this time. I tried to stay positive; what other choice was there? My therapist would remind me there is always a choice, that people stay frozen in fear, give into their depression, don’t try to change. But for me, there has only been one choice- to move forward.
I’ve often wondered where this drive inside of me comes from; it certainly wasn’t taught to me. I watched my dad stay stuck in his emotional and physical pain, turning to anger and oxys to escape. I watched my mom stay stuck in an abusive and loveless marriage, paralyzed by fear of the unknown. I watched my sister stay stuck in my dad’s shadow, fearful to disobey his orders and follow her passions. I refused to accept a similar fate- to stay trapped in amber.
I went to my hairdresser with photos of Maggie Rogers, my current pop icon, in tow for inspiration. If I could channel her effortless confidence, then maybe I could be ok with this unwanted change. As she cut my hair, inches fell to the floor, and I was calm. She put product into my hair and twirled bouncy spirals that she then diffused dry, and I was calm. When she brushed out my curls, my chest tightened, and I struggled to catch my breath. I watched my hair puff up and frizz, inflating from her embolden choice. Our eyes met in the mirror, a brief acknowledgement of the blunder she had made. She took a curling iron to it, but my hair fought back, angered by the heat. In this moment, there was no turning back, no way to return to the version of me I knew before.
I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me. I looked like a shell of my former self, my hair resembling a helmet to brace for impending impact. My hairdresser tried to reassure me, “You just have to play around with it!”, but all I could see was that little girl who yearned for more. I returned home feeling defeated, with only one option at hand- to move forward.
It is an unbearable weight to put one foot in front of the other; a hidden resignation that life was not supposed to end up this way. My hair has started to grow back, but continues to shed. I am gentle with it now, brushing it delicately, and conditioning it with compassion. I see new growth pop up like hopeful sprouts- a sign that new life is forming here. And yet, every day I feel the weight of my hair- the manifestation of my illness and all that I have lost.
