Appearances

I go for shots again tomorrow.  I am feeling somewhat disheartened about having them as there are many new growing areas where I am losing hair.  I don't like having the needles shoved into my head.  It is frustrating to me that even though I am trying to live a healthier life that it isn't changing my condition that I am able to detect yet.

 I think about stopping the shots and seeing if the hair grows back on it's own.  At least then I can spare myself the trauma of being poked all over my head every month.  As well as saving the money I pay each time I go. I know though that if the hair didn't fill in as it does with the shots I would feel more beaten down then I do now. So stopping doesn't really feel like an option.

People keep asking if the shots are working, when I say they are, people say that is great.  I always have to pause and say it is great...but...The but is that the shots do not stop my hair from falling out.  It only stimulates new growth.  Which means that in my estimation, if my hair keeps falling out the way it has been, that in the next year or so most of it will have fallen out and be in various stages of regrowth.  I can't imagine what that will look like.

I mostly have a good attitude about it.  What I wrote the past few days isn't bull shit.  I really am trying to keep myself focused on the things that are truly important, it is just sometimes I feel nervous about it. I feel nervous about how I will feel if it does all fall out. I wonder what I will look like if it is bald and then patches of growth all different lengths.

  I know the people who know me and love me aren't going to care about it.  They really aren't.  I don't worry so much abut that.  Which is a blessing to have people in my life that I know love me for me.  I am more nervous about what strangers will think.  Which is very different for me.

I have always said that I am not the type of girl who cares about what I look like or what people think of me.  I have never been a person who felt like I needed to do my hair and make up to run to the store.  I would say cavalierly that I was low maintenance.    I would throw on a sweatshirt and pull my hair back in a ponytail and be on my way.  I sort of want to punch past me in the face for not realizing that everyone isn't that lucky.  I was completely unaware that there were people out there who didn't have that option.  That it was not a simple choice to be low maintenance.

 It isn't to say that I regret that there was a time in my life that I felt comfortable in myself in my natural form.  It is more that now I understand people who take time before they leave the house to be more comfortable with flaws in their form whether they are real, imagined, or exaggerated in their own minds.  Or even if they are just taking more time because it makes them feel beautiful, who was I to ever think I was better because I would just leave the house?

  I take a lot more time to leave the house the majority of the time now.  Even if my hair is lying on my head easily I still feel ugly. I will take time to do my make up and pick out a nice outfit to help pull away from my perceived flaws. Most of the time no one is probably even aware of my issues but me.  I wonder now if some of the girls I always thought of as high maintenance were really just trying to mask the flaws they thought everyone would be paying attention to.  

I then wonder if I am vain that I care so much about what people might be thinking of if they see one of my patches.  I also feel ashamed of them sometimes like they somehow make me less of a person. 

 I went through a few week period this winter where I sincerely believed that there were first grade boys who had seen my large patch in the back of my head and were making fun of me in my daughter's lunchroom.  I am still not sure they weren't, as they would for a few weeks span jab at each other and then point at me each time they saw me and then laugh.   Even as I type that, I can see how pathetic it sounds, as if it matters what some 6 year old boys think of me. I hated that it bothered me the way it did.  The worst thought that plagued me was the idea that it might reflect badly on my daughter.  I had horrific visions of them saying something to her about how nasty her mom was.  

Eventually I stopped paying attention to them because I knew I was driving myself a little crazy and it was unacceptable.  That was around the same time I started making all these changes to become a more whole person.  It became clear to me that I had to start loving myself from the inside out.  Which I am really trying to do, but I struggle.

 I guess the point is that now this low maintenance girl is sometimes very worried what strangers are thinking or what they will be thinking in the future.  I get nervous about people staring at me that I don't know.  If my hair all falls out I wonder if they will think I am really sick with cancer or something and have misplaced pity.  I wonder if I will care more than I want to when I can't hide it anymore.

At first when this started happening I thought that I would get a wig if it got bad enough.  Now I am not so sure about that.  I have done some reading that suggests that the wigs can be damaging to the new hair growth.  I will probably end up getting some head wraps. To be honest though, I hope that I will love myself from the inside out enough that I will be bad ass enough to just go out with out any covering and not feel like I had to explain it to anyone.