Naked Ape
Part of my end of a conversation with another person who has alopecia follows. We've been comparing notes on how we deal with people staring, when we each lost our hair, how we cope (or not), and so on. I thought the little bit I just sent them might be of interest to friends and stalkers:
"I started getting the patchy baldness thing when I was 14 and that was on and off for maybe 20 years. When I hit 35, it started falling out and not growing back and I ended up getting steroid shots in my head for a few years. That helped but had nasty side effects. When my eyebrows started to go, my doctor said the shots weren't working (despite having a full head of hair from teh shots), so she wouldn't renew the prescription. My gall bladder blew out a couple of years ago and I think that's what kicked my Celiacs disease (that I didn't know about til last year) into high gear, which made my immune system start to really drop like a rock. The rest of my hair fell out really really fast. When I had nothing but a mohawk left on top of my head, I could tell when it was only going to last another couple of weeks and I did a charity auction and the friend that won shaved the last half-inch-wide strip off. No stubble grew back. I think my scalp was relieved that it didn't have to work so hard anymore. ; )
So now I got no nose hairs, no eyebrow or eyelash hairs, I suspect my ear hairs are gone, and just about all my body hair is gone. Sometimes I feel like a naked mole rat, since I'm fat and pink and bald, but I don't have a tail or eat shit (except metaphorically) so ... that's a good thing. What's kind of funny is that now I look at people with a lot of hair and they seem kind of like monkeys to me. I sort of feel more evolved past the furry ape stage, you know? I feel like I'm walking upright on the ground, using tools and inventing shit like literature and math, and all the people who still have body hair and head hair are swinging from the trees. It's kind of like looking at a hologram sometimes when I'm with friends: I keep getting flashes of them going OOK OOK and flinging poo through cage bars at a zoo, or doing the 2010 thing with the bone and the obelisk.
So. ::cough:: It does create weird headspace sometimes, but I also value it because you never know what assumptions you have about the world, yourself and other people until you're shoved kicking and screaming out of your comfort zone."
"I started getting the patchy baldness thing when I was 14 and that was on and off for maybe 20 years. When I hit 35, it started falling out and not growing back and I ended up getting steroid shots in my head for a few years. That helped but had nasty side effects. When my eyebrows started to go, my doctor said the shots weren't working (despite having a full head of hair from teh shots), so she wouldn't renew the prescription. My gall bladder blew out a couple of years ago and I think that's what kicked my Celiacs disease (that I didn't know about til last year) into high gear, which made my immune system start to really drop like a rock. The rest of my hair fell out really really fast. When I had nothing but a mohawk left on top of my head, I could tell when it was only going to last another couple of weeks and I did a charity auction and the friend that won shaved the last half-inch-wide strip off. No stubble grew back. I think my scalp was relieved that it didn't have to work so hard anymore. ; )
So now I got no nose hairs, no eyebrow or eyelash hairs, I suspect my ear hairs are gone, and just about all my body hair is gone. Sometimes I feel like a naked mole rat, since I'm fat and pink and bald, but I don't have a tail or eat shit (except metaphorically) so ... that's a good thing. What's kind of funny is that now I look at people with a lot of hair and they seem kind of like monkeys to me. I sort of feel more evolved past the furry ape stage, you know? I feel like I'm walking upright on the ground, using tools and inventing shit like literature and math, and all the people who still have body hair and head hair are swinging from the trees. It's kind of like looking at a hologram sometimes when I'm with friends: I keep getting flashes of them going OOK OOK and flinging poo through cage bars at a zoo, or doing the 2010 thing with the bone and the obelisk.
So. ::cough:: It does create weird headspace sometimes, but I also value it because you never know what assumptions you have about the world, yourself and other people until you're shoved kicking and screaming out of your comfort zone."