Damn Baby, What’d You Do To Your Hair?

Edited by Carol Eugene Park

My relationship with my hair is relatively simple- I hate it. I hate the mousy colour, I hate the straw-like texture. I hate how thin it is, I hate how it just hangs against my head- not contributing. If my appearance was a sports team it would easily be a bench player. While I try to make my eyes and cheekbones rise to the top in a tough match against heavy bags and dry skin, my hair just sits there- not contributing. Unfortunately sports teams are only as strong as their weakest player.

I’m not brave enough to dye it- but I’ve tried every possible style. I’ve had it long, I’ve done the bob. In my senior year of high school, as part of my never-ending quest to be like Felicity Porter, I cut it all off. I liked it for a while, then it grew into a half-mullett I had for the better part of first year of university. If I didn’t have massive moles on my head- I might shave it off hoping it would grow into something more inspiring. Currently it’s slightly past shoulder length- which offends me the least, but I’m no longer concerned with the length, or the colour, or the way it just hangs there.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had ticks. I’m a chronic nail biter, as anyone who’s ever spent over an hour with me can tell you. I have scars all over arms and legs that look like cigarette butts, but are actually mosquito bites I picked at for weeks on end. I shake my legs to the furor of those who sit on couches with me. When I moved to a cold climate and began spending half the year in sweaters I would tug and twist the wool. I would occasionally do the same when I caught a split end, but then it got worse.

I wish I didn’t have to connect everything to the election of Donald Trump, but whether I like it or not (I do not) he’s everywhere. In one of my shallower moments on 11/9/16 I remember thinking “I don’t want to have to turn on the news and see his face everyday.” It’s nearly a year later and he’s still everywhere- on the news, on twitter, on comedy shows. Except for the odd weeks that serial sexual harassers are exposed; he is all anyone seems to talk about. I wish I had a more eloquent way of putting this, but all I can say is it sucks. It sucks for the country, It sucks for the world, It sucks for the communities he attacks with policy and rhetoric, and it really sucks for my hair.

In the months between the election and the inauguration my anxiety skyrocketed. Symptoms I’ve dealt with all my life worsened. I pretty much avoided all public outings that weren’t school related. I stopped putting any effort in my appearance- bringing my heavy bags and dry skin to a decisive victory. All I did was read the news and tug and twist at my mousy, straw-like locks.

I mainly pulled from around the ear; I always felt my sideburns were too prominent. Then I started to pick at the top right corner of my head that was always a little uneven. Eventually I got to my new hairs in the back- the way they hung out of my ponytail always annoyed me.

By January it got bad. I remember sitting in the back of my lecture, not taking in any relevant information, with a pile of brown strands beside me by the end. I looked in the mirror and turned to find the left side of my head filled with half strands of hair. I had to take a razor to even out the sides. However much I hated my hair, losing patches of it was not a good look. 

Apparently this conundrum I’m facing is called trichotillomania which I cannot pronounce and checked the spelling of three times. It is born out of the usual: anxiety, stress, depression. It’s more common in women likely because we have more hair to pull. I hesitated googling all these things because that would mean acknowledging I had a real verifiable problem- rather than someone who just picks at the odd strand of loose hair every once in a while. I was worried about seeing images of how bad it could get, but then again I have to look at the patch of hair missing from the left side of my head every day.

I don’t know why I do it. I guess it’s because I’ve never been able to control my hair- despite all my efforts it has never been how I wanted it to be. Now it doesn’t seem like I’m able to control anything- so I needed to take this one thing back.

I wish this was a story of recovery in some way, I wish I could tell anyone who bothered to read until the end that I’m better now. Unfortunately like my hair itself I’m still a work in progress. Sometimes I’m successfully fighting my urges, and then sometimes when the world has me down it’s as bad as ever. I guess I’m hoping that putting it in writing will be the ultimate step in recognizing I have a real verifiable problem. Hopefully I’ll one day have a story about recovering from trichotillomania- and maybe I’ll even have a nice thing or two to say about my hair. Until then I’ll just try to keep myself together and try to avoid the news.