Really?

Alopecia.   It sounds like a tropical fruit.  Maybe distantly related to papayas, and growing on flowering trees in Madagascar.  Or perhaps, a fine piece of fabric, made from whatever good fabric is made of.  Anyways, either way it sounds far off, distant and exotic.  This in a way is true. Alopecia, from what I know if it, is a rare “autoimmune” disorder where some little cell who seems to be the boss gives the green light to a bunch of cells to attack the innocent hair follicles, causing hair to fall out and little bald patches to appear. Meanwhile the hair follicles had no idea this attack was going to happen, and they are unarmed, no weapons in sight.. Except traces of rosemary. But really, is a little rosemary plant going to win the battle? No, I didn’t think so either.  Sorry to be pessimistic, but come on. Where did the rosemary come from? Just a shampoo I bought. It’s from a hippie store in Chinatown. The bottle says lavender rosemary shampoo, and it says it promotes hair growth.   I found it beside the 100 % natural spearmint toothpaste.  Needless to say rosemary is not any match compared to the force of the cells who are under the leadership of a boss cell.  Scientists are cringing at how unread I am.  But some part of me cannot be bothered to get the terminology right.  Because really, if I know what types of cells are what, is that going to magically make my hair grow? That piece of knowledge? Probably not.  I really wish it did.  In fact every time I’m in the shower I leave the shampoo on for an extraneous amount of time, hoping that maybe this time, something will happen.  But still, I’m left with the massive, disgusting black glob that needs to be cleaned out from the drain.  The glob is gross, I’m sure you non-alopecians have experienced the nastiness of a hair glob.  I understand now why cats make such a horrible sound when they are hacking one out.  Then there is the emotional baggage.  So much of it too! That nasty black glob brings out the worst in me.  I get very angry at the world, very quickly.  But seriously, what nineteen year old girl willingly signs up to have her hair fall out unexpectedly?  Let me think, no one. And if someone did, I would have to introduce myself to them, and talk them out of their decision.  To be really not positive, I just have to say, hair is more than hair.  Hair is more than what it looks like.  It’s unique to everyone.  And especially for girls. We claim we don’t always care what we look like, but we do.  It’s our nature.   Thank god I have boobs, something to indicate I’m a woman! And if there is a dude on a cloud up there conducting all this, it would not be funny to have my boobs fall off!  Needless to say, hair is an extention of personality, blah, blah blah.  And wigs. Wigs are probably amazing, in fact I might need one some day.  But I can’t help but picture the gross earwig that I saw in the washroom this morning, and I didn’t kill him.  Usually I can’t leave the room before killing a bug I have spotted, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, I left him there.  I arbitrarily decided it was a boy. He’s just chilling in the washroom, but now when I think of wigs, I think of him. And that doesn’t correlate to lots of self confidence, and beauty.

On the upside, I am an artsy kid, so people don’t even consider it weird that I spend every day wearing a hat of some sort.  Most people compliment me on them! Today I wore an adorable pink hat, with a little flower on it.  The hats are cute, and fun to wear, and they hide a lot.  I have to thank my bestie for the idea to go cute hat shopping.  There is a store in Victoria called “Roberta’s Hats”.  This store is filled with fancy women who work there, who all wear these abstract hats that are totally savvy, and look like something out of vogue magazine.  I chose the most simple hats from that store, because I can’t afford to rework my entire wardrobe for the sake of some far out lids.  But if you ever are in need of a funky hat, I check this place out.  After walking out of that store, with a too heavy back pack hanging from my shoulders, I trudged off to the Running Room to pick up my registration package for the Run for the Cure which was happening the next day.  The run was fabulous, except I felt my obvious bald spots made me look like a survivor, or a chemo patient, or something, because I did get some stares that did not linger on my eyes.  I’m fortunate not to own an electric razor, because in moments of anger, I do get rather impulsive.  And the results would probably be very upsetting.  In fact I would probably be bald.  I’m so scatter brained recently.