This is a phrase I’ve come across a lot when researching Alopecia on the internet and to start with I didn’t fully understand it but now I get it – my life has been changed forever.  I have days where I am able to look in the mirror and focus on the positives, I have decent skin, my features don’t seem to be too unfortunate, my teeth are ok and even though my head is rather large it’s a reasonable shape but I also have days where I look in the mirror and I cry.  Not only do I not feel like a woman without hair but on the bad days I see an alien when I look in the mirror.

In my last post I was pondering what it means to have a good life and I also talked about the upcoming move to the country in the hope of having a more peaceful and less stressful life.  The town I now live in has a population of 554 people, there are no street lights and very little traffic although a semi-trailer drove down my street the other day with a truckload of hay bales on board and that was kind of noisy.  When I was in the process of purchasing my tiny cottage in the country an ‘evaluator’ was sent from the city to inspect my prospective home and her comment was the house is uninhabitable and $30,000 would need to be spent just to make the house liveable.  I purchased the house anyway and even though my tiny cottage is rather rustic it belongs to me and I am no longer paying hundreds of dollars in interest to the bank each pay day. 

Becoming debt free has been a huge burden off my back, living in a small quiet country town has been as lovely as I hoped, being so far away from my adult children is not nice but they didn’t live at home anymore anyway so the tree change has been a very positive one for me.

My old life included a mortgage which I would have taken decades to pay off, living on a busy street on a tiny block with an alcoholic neighbour who would somehow know exactly when I was about to walk out my front door and proceed to talk shit until I managed to escape, working a job which I detested and constant deadlines and schedules which had to be obeyed.

My new life consists of waking up when I feel like it, having my breakfast and coffee in bed, taking my dog for a long walk each day, sitting in the sun for a bit each afternoon and sitting by the fire at night with no need to go to bed until I feel like it because there won’t be an alarm going off the next morning.

I’m as happy as a pig in shit with my new life but I wish I had hair, is it wrong to allow my happiness to be tainted by something so superficial?  Why is that I don’t feel like a woman anymore just because I don’t have hair?  Will I ever be able to look in the mirror and see the good things about Susan even though she has no hair?  I have never considered myself to be a shallow person, I don’t focus too much on the physical attributes of other humans so why am I so embarrassed about how I look without any hair, eyelashes or eyebrows?

I hope I will eventually be able to look in the mirror and not be alarmed by what I see, I hope I can get past how I look on the outside because it even though having Alopecia has changed my life forever I cannot let it ruin my life – especially now that I have achieved one of my lifelong dreams of living a peaceful life in the country.

A new home in the country.

Chilling with Hudson

Making really crappy loaves of bread.

I’m the kind of person who tries to ‘put things in perspective’ when I’m feeling down but I’ve found that difficult this week. I don’t know if this because I’m in the process of packing up my home in preparation for a move to the country and coming across old photos, beautiful cards from my kids, memorabilia from my marriage has made me feel sad about what could have been or maybe it’s the reality of quitting my job and moving to a small town that is a bit daunting.

I’ve wanted to get out of the suburbs since I was 21 and I’m finally going to be making this dream a reality 21 years later. Losing my hair has certainly made me realise what’s important and in my opinion ‘having a good life’ does not include; working 5 days out of 7, doing a job I don’t enjoy, having a mortgage that I won’t be able to pay off until I’m 60 and not having enough energy to keep fit and grow my own veggies etc.

I’m hoping my move to the country will give me the life I’ve craved for a couple of decades but I think it’s important to find happiness regardless of our situation… some days that’s easier said than done.

Focusing on the positives; these photos make me happy because I’m so lucky to have two kids who I enjoy. I am so proud of my children and the strength of character they have developed over the past few years… all I wish for my kids is that they get to live a good life and I think that depends on our ability to put things into perspective. 🙂

One of my favourite movies is called the Princess Bride staring Cary Elwes and Robyn Wright.  It’s a movie about twue wuv and mawage (no I have not misspelt true love and marriage, if you know of the movie you will understand).  I took lots of photos as I was losing my hair and I cried nearly every time I took the photos because losing my hair symbolised everything that I have lost over the past few years.  When I took the photo below I was shocked at how thin my hair had become but through my tears I began laughing out loud in my bathroom because when I looked in the mirror all I could see was Miracle Max’s wife Valerie when she yells back at him; “I’m not a witch I’m your wife”.

I often wonder if I will ever be a wife again, part of me thinks no bloody way but the other part of me hopes I will find a man who makes me laugh and who is a trustworthy companion to travel through life with. While I wait for him to appear I will continue to laugh at the obstacles which come my way – even if I do see Valerie staring back at me in the mirror sometimes! 🙂

When I have a good laugh about something there tends to be a bit of snot which comes flying out of my nose before I can stop it. This is not a new thing, anyone who knows me well has most likely had the pleasure of wiping my snot off their face or arm at some point in our history. Even our courier at work has had my snot on his arm when he made a funny remark as I was signing the dispatch note a couple of years ago.

I was putting my makeup on this morning and realised my nostrils were looking rather naked, after closer inspection I discovered that I only have one hair in the left nostril and three in the other – what the hell?! Does this mean I’m going to be more prone to having hayfever and other allergies because I no longer have my precious little nose hairs to filter out the pollens!?

Google is both amazing and terrifying and according to Google “nasal hair functions include filtering foreign particles from entering the nasal cavity and collecting moisture”. Well I can tell you this, my family and friends are going have the pleasure of being snotted on/moisture from my nose flung upon them due my lack of nasal hair that’s for sure.

Just another joy of being an Alopecian but it isn’t going to stop me from laughing and blowing snot out of my beak – it could be worse – actually it most likely will be worse next time I get a terrible cold so maybe don’t get me laughing during the winter. 🙂

I often walk past Raquel (who when I don’t need her sits quietly on her stand in the bathroom) and tell her she’s a bitch for making my head itchy and hot and for giving me a headache by sitting snuggly on my head all day while I’m at work.

Raquel was with me on my recent road trip to the Victorian High Country and she was as boring as bat shit on the 13 hour drive! Not once did she make an effort to sing along to the new cd I bought especially for the trip, not once did she offer to drive to give my back a break and not once did she respond to the comments I made about the beautiful countryside or the quaint little cottages along the way.

Raquel was my first wig and she cost me $500 from Bonnies Wigs in the Adelaide Arcade, which has been helping women feel girly again since 1968. My girlfriend Tricia took me wig shopping and as soon as we spotted Raquel in the shop we both knew she was the one for me. I walked into Bonnie’s Wigs with hardly any hair and feeling like crap but I walked out of Bonnie’s Wig with a huge smile on my face and I felt like a million dollars.

Tricia and I then had lunch together and discussed life, work, our kids, we laughed about our beloved pooches and then went to Bupa to hopefully get some money back from the new wig purchase. We were expecting to get maybe $100 back from my health fund but within three hours Bupa had refunded $450 back into my bank account! So in reality Raquel is cheap tart who is only worth $50 so I’ve decided to replace her… Rapunzel is on her way from China!!

Yesterday was the first day I ventured out without my wig on.  Just over a month ago I would never have thought I would be hitting the hardware store without any hair!!  I sat in the carpark of my local hardware store for quite some time before I could step out of my car with only a scarf covering my bald head… its funny the things we take for granted until they are gone.

I felt very self-conscious, I left my sunglasses on and was desperately hoping I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew.  The thing about any kind of disease which causes you to lose your hair is you feel naked without it.  It’s like rocking up to the shops butt naked and expecting people not to stare or wonder what the hell is going on in your life.

I have always taken great pride in getting good haircuts, having nice colours put on my hair and I never leave the house without make up on and my hair done but why is it that now that all my hair is gone I feel ashamed and embarrassed?  It’s not my fault this has happened, I haven’t done anything wrong!  There are plenty of people at my local shops who look like they’ve been dragged through a bush backwards and don’t even bother brushing their hair before they go out – but maybe that’s only in my non-affluent neighbourhood 🙂

I was lucky today because there were only four women in the garden section of the hardware store and all four women treated me as if I had Julia Roberts kind of hair – not like someone who appears to have cancer and has lost all her hair from the chemotherapy.

So as I walked about selecting new vegetable plants for my garden I heard this quote from The Help in my head… “you is kind, you is smart, you is important” and guess what – it really wasn’t that awful being out there in the big bad world without any hair because it doesn’t change who I am.