waitressing in the evenings, I began to notice that my hair was thinning rapidly. Having read that this was very common after childbirth I wasn’t too alarmed initially but then in the mirror I noticed the bald patches on my scalp; two shiny bald spots about the size of ten pence pieces. My stomach began churning as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. I went to visit my doctor, who told me not to worry. He reassured me that it was very common for women to suffer with a little hair loss after giving birth. I left the surgery still feeling concerned, and I had every right to be. Over the next couple of weeks I began finding huge amounts of hair on my pillow upon waking in the mornings, and noticed masses of hair falling out while I was in the shower. I became consumed with fear and obsessed with feeling my scalp. Repeatedly my fingers explored the smooth skin, hoping for signs of re-growth, but the strange waxy-feeling bald patches stayed the same. What I was losing on my head was continually on my mind. I checked my hair with mirrors repeatedly throughout the day. Every time I looked in the mirror I realised that my fear was justified: new bald patches every day, bald patches joining together, and endless amounts of hair creating their own carpet wherever I walked. Disbelief, anxiety, and crying quickly became part of my daily routine. The only break I got from my feelings and my thoughts was during the three evenings a week when I worked as a waitress in a local restaurant. Being so busy, I hardly had time to think about myself during these shifts as I gave the customers my full attention; this was short-lived however because my hair loss quickly became visibly apparent. I quit my job knowing that my hair would be falling into food. Besides, I was convinced that no one would want to eat in front of me, looking as repulsive as I did.
I returned to my GP, who tried convincing me that the hair loss was probably caused by my own hair pulling. Tears poured down my face as I whispered, “It’s not.” Inside I was silently screaming, “Please just help me.” He prescribed a steroid solution to rub into my scalp but the hair continued to disappear.
My morning showers filled me with dread. I stood, closing my eyes tight so that I couldn’t see the hair falling onto my body and then journeying to the plug hole. Yet I had no choice but to face that plug hole, day after day, because it kept getting blocked. Forcing the tweezers down, I would grasp the slippery loose clumps of hair that had become tightly entangled. I would tug and pull, hoping that I would only find a few strands, but the tweezers always came out covered in endless trails of repulsive, sticky hair that made me retch. I would stand and stare at my retrieval, looking in disbelief at what should have been part of me. My hair, on a mission, definitely decided that it had other places to go. The rest of it left me within the next couple of weeks, taking my eyebrows and eyelashes along for the ride.
One morning, looking in the mirror, I decided that my ugliness was enhanced by my seemingly untreatable skin condition vitiligo, which began in my teenage years. (I had battled with confidence over the years as my skin continually seemed to lose pigmentation, leaving me with large white patches all over my body and face.) Piebald and bald, I stood wondering why the tiny tuft of hair on the top of my scalp had decided to stay. As I stared at my reflection, I felt that I had been stripped of everything: my hair, my confidence, my identity, and my purpose. Being naked and exposed was terrifying. The world that I had once felt part of continued around me. I looked out of my bedroom window and noticed people driving and walking to work each day, going about their usual routine. I sent them silent screams from my head: “Don’t you see what is happening to me?”, but I didn’t want them to see. I felt like an outcast: ugly, devastated, and hopelessly lost.
Returning once more to my GP, feeling totally numb, powerless, and barely able to speak, I watched as he wrote out a prescription for anti-depressants. Unable to fight my corner by this point, I left with the prescription and the words, “I’ll try and get you an urgent appointment with the specialist,” ringing in my ears. Emotional pain unlike anything I’d ever known had moved in and had come to stay. There seemed no way out. Every glance in the mirror made me feel even more distraught but I just couldn’t stop looking, desperately hoping and praying for signs of re-growth. Eventually, I went to the chemist to pick up my prescribed tablets. Returning home with the medication in my hands, I had a gut feeling that this wasn’t the answer. Knowing no other way of helping myself at this time, the very next day I took my first anti-depressant. What I wasn’t prepared for, was how much worse I felt having resorted to this medication only seconds after swallowing the first tablet. I didn’t know much at this time, but what I did know was that every cell in my body and mind immediately screamed, “No, this isn’t the way!” Feeling that I had made the wrong decision so strongly and unable to deal with it being in my body, I ran to the bathroom. I forced my fingers down my throat, retching to get rid of the tiny tablet that had caused such overwhelmingly toxic feelings. Whether it came back up or not I’m not sure, but I chose to believe that it wasn’t in me. I walked straight to the kitchen and buried the rest of the medication deep in the bin so I would never, ever be tempted to go back.
Continuing to feel hopelessly lost, I sat sobbing and trembling on the sofa one day repeating the words, “Who am I? Why am I here?” over and over again. I hoped that the universe would notice my hysteria, take pity, and give me an answer. It never did. I was so confused, so scared, because I had lost me. I had been stripped back bare to absolute zero, whatever ‘zero’ was. I felt transparent, void of heart, spirit, and soul. My absolute lowest point was when a friend knocked at the front door. I hid below the letter box with my daughter, tears pouring down my face, and my finger on her lip ‘shushing’ her to be silently still. Hearing the friend walk away, I remember feeling as if I just didn’t fit in my life anymore. Outcast from society, bald and bare, there was so little to grasp onto with regards to who I was, or who I was supposed to be. My soul had disappeared. “Is this what we experience when we die, when we head towards the pearly gates?” I wondered. Maybe I had already died and had become trapped on my way to the afterlife and nobody had thought to tell me.
All around me people continued to go about their daily lives, seemingly with purpose, totally oblivious. Little did they know about the woman who sat in her flat every day in ‘nothingness’, too ugly and afraid to step out.
CHANGING ROOM TIP
Choose To See Nakedness As A Gift
Years later, I smile as part of my purpose begins to emerge onto this paper, as words that you are about to read. My soul wants to speak with you right now, and it wants you to listen. As you listen, be strong, reach out with both hands and pull these words into your body, mind, and heart, allowing them a home in your life forever:
In life you will get lost. Stuff will happen that you don’t expect and can’t control. Nakedness isn’t a choice, but how you deal with it is. Your future happiness depends on how you choose to see and use your challenge, and what you choose to find within it.
Ultimately, getting lost gives you the opportunity to find yourself. Everything trivial falls away as the truly important things in life make themselves known. False layers that don’t really fit disappear and you get to find out who you really are. When you discover who you really are, you get to live the life that you really want. You get to live your truth.
Choose to reach deep inside and reconnect with who you REALLY are. Choose to see nakedness as a gift.
You can choose today to begin to see your nakedness as a space in which you start to become a research specialist, set on the discovery of the ‘real you’. The real you is a person dressed with love and happiness, walking upon the earth lit up like the brightest star. The real you shines so radiantly that you dazzle others with your spirit and soul. The real you is a beacon of hope for other ‘nudies’ yet to start their journey. You just didn’t know it until now.
Your gift is with you, just waiting to be unwrapped. Summon your strength to untie that big red bow, and take a peek inside. You are about to find out who you really are, and tap into your potential, your purpose, and your calling. Why wait?
THE SOUND OF
