More Power to Me!

The disease that shook my teenage years and imprinted harrowing memories in my mind also gave me a new perspective. When I was sixteen, I had beautiful thick black hair that touched my waist. I had a pretty round face and two large eyes set in it. It might seem disdainful to my readers because I am describing my beauty like this. But to relate to my story, you need to form a picture of my appearance. Dear readers, you can visualize me as beautiful as your high school crush or like that one beautiful girl of whom every other girl was jealous. It would suffice to say that many boys had a crush on me too. But I loved a boy. And he loved me back. He was kind of 'the one' for me, I thought. He used to indulge me with every attention, comfort, and kindness. I believed that I couldn't be happier than this.

All was going on well when the unexpected happened. One fine day I woke up from my sleep with clumps of hair on my pillow. It did not look like a regular hair loss. This shedding thick tufts of hair on my pillows, bed, clothes, the shower floor and after combing followed for a few days. When I showed them to my mother, she discovered patches of missing hair on my scalp. The doctor who first saw me diagnosed me with alopecia areata. My parents took me to a lot of doctors and tried various treatments. Every day as the bald patches on my scalp increased, my hair thinned. Doctors asked my parents to shave off my hair. I looked at myself in the mirror repeatedly. My baldness was plainly visible. And soon, these long tresses of hair too would go away. It devastated me, for which I ended up crying so much. It made me so depressed. My parents tried in vain to cheer me up by saying that my hair would grow back after recovery. I had my head shaved. My treatment continued. The doctors put me on a course of steroids that work with immunosuppressive effects. 

I didn't go to school for one week after I shaved my hair. But I had to continue my schooling. I was in a state of turmoil on the first day of school. I wore a headscarf to cover my bald head as much as possible. My parents had already talked with the school management to inform them of my condition. Everyone was curious about my scarf, so I attempted to hide myself from their notice. At recess, a few friends from my class surrounded me and started joking about my headscarf. Then that joke went from teasing to bullying. I tried to deal with them and threatened to complain to the teachers, but the bullying continued. People had gathered around me, curiously enjoying the drama. My boyfriend was nearby. Though he meekly protested on my behalf, he seemed curious about learning the truth himself, even though that would hurt my self-image. And then someone from the back, pulled my headscarf! For a few moments, there was complete silence. 

Then there were mixed reactions from the crowd. Someone smirked, someone gasped, someone said, "Oh God! Why?". I was looking down. Tears burned my eyes and blurred my vision. Someone shouted at the people surrounding me and pulled me away from them. I couldn't see who it was until she wiped my tears and hugged me. She was a classmate of mine. 

When I went to school after three days, I realized that everything was not like before. People either turned their heads away from me or deliberately ignored me. My sweet lover was no more interested in me. He refused to talk to me. When some of my friends tried to convince me on my behalf, he responded that I was unfit to be his girlfriend anymore and that after seeing me that day, his love for me died. I was devastated.

My treatment continued for the next three months. Doctors said that my depression might be triggering my alopecia. But my parents did not know the cause of my depression.

My parents wanted me to explore other options like wearing wigs. But the thought of it felt so disturbing to me that I declined. The doctors said that I might need to take steroid injections on my scalp to help regrow my hair. I remember the first injection being so painful. When they sprayed liquid nitrogen on the bald spot before injecting the needle, it felt like shards of glass hitting my skin. After taking two or three injections like that, my condition seemed to improve. In the meanwhile, my boyfriend made a new girlfriend. I took counselling sessions with a psychiatrist. And it helped me a lot. 

I learnt to let go and move on. I re-focused on my well-being and studies and discovered creative outlets like journaling and painting. I learnt to embrace my body and my looks. 

Now readers, picturize me like this after three years - fit body, pixie-cut hair, in the first year of my dream college, reaching out to people with alopecia to help them cope with the depression and living my life to the fullest.