Get Me Off This Ride

Hello my little boo thangs. On Friday I was chatting with my friend Zigs about this blog. Zigs has been one of my biggest blog supporters from the jump. She mentioned how crazy it was that she didn't know anything about alopecia until we became friends. It is kinda wild that something that impacts my life so deeply is also something a lot of people haven’t even heard of. Somehow, I did know about alopecia long before I was diagnosed with it. I’m not sure how exactly. If I had to guess, I’d say it was from a Seventeen or YM magazine article (you know you grew up in the 90s if you know what YM is), or maybe an episode of Oprah? You get a wig! You get a wig! Who knows, but I’m glad I get to be part of the movement to spread awareness now. Today’s post should be shortish and sweet. I want to take you back to Fall of 2016. Temps were dropping, leaves were turning, and my hair was growing back. Say whaaaaat? You heard me right. My hair was back bitch (insert Britney Spears giphy here). I don’t know if the rest of the bald population experiences this, but when I’m not wearing my wig, I’m rubbing my head allllll the time. It has become a nervous habit of sorts. I was so used to feeling nothing but skin that I was in shock the day I thought I felt a thin layer of peach fuzz. I grabbed my iphone and positioned myself in front of a mirror to snap a pic. Which is shockingly harder than one would think. I zoomed in and sure as shit there it was...REGROWTH! Up until this point, I assumed regrowth was an urban legend in the alopecia universalis world. Sure I had heard stories of people going into spontaneous remission and growing their hair back. Was it possible that I was about to become one of those people who got to tell the same tale? Each day I would take a new picture and each day there was MORE HAIR! I started to refer to it as my hair Yamaka because it bore a little resemblance to one. I was so scared that one wrong move would cause it all to fall out again. At the same time, I started to get excited. I imagined it growing long enough to get extensions, and never having to wear a wig again. I even had my hair extension specialist picked out. I followed her posts on Instagram excited for the day that I could make my appointment.

That year I went back to Ohio for Christmas and New Year. When I got back to Denver, it took approximately one week for all of my regrowth to fall out. One freakin week... Once again I felt betrayed by my body. It felt like such a cruel joke. I was so excited for 3ish months, and in one week it was all ripped away from me again. I don’t know if something happened during that Ohio trip that caused my body to freak the fuck out again, or if it was just completely random. I will never know.
That experience taught me that I do not want my hair to grow back unless there is a 1000000000% chance it will never fall out again. I’d rather be bald for the rest of my life than get my hopes up only to have them bashed all over again. The roller coaster of emotions that comes along with growth/loss is one that I’d prefer not to ride. My emotions take me on enough roller coaster rides that I think I’m set for a lifetime.