Broken Doll

I’m so tired I feel like I can’t put thoughts together, but I’m still awake.

Last weekend saw the end of any pretending that I’m not going bald. The wig has come out full-time now.

But at the end of the day, I still have to look at myself in the mirror. My hair is so thin. My scalp is clearly visible. I look old… like I’m about 80 years old. Squashed down from being under a wig for 12 hours, it looks patchy. I look sick. I look like shit. I look fucking ugly.

I’m having trouble dealing with the wig. Even just in practical terms. It’s hot and a bit scratchy. I feel like I’m wearing a helmet, all day, every day. It took me two days to figure out that it was the hairnet I was wearing underneath that was giving me the tremendous pressure headache. I still haven’t figured out the happy medium between my-hairline-is-slowly-sliding-backwards and I-have-a-nasty-headache-right-behind-my-ears. The bangs hang in my eyes and won’t stay swept to the sides. The ends get super tangled by the end of the day and I worry, constantly, that it looks ropey and unnatural. The aforementioned sliding hairline means that I’m constantly adjusting, constantly worrying, which I’m sure looks weird and does nothing for my peace of mind. The tangled hair in the back and at the nape of my neck takes 15 minutes or more to comb out every evening. I’m super-careful, super-paranoid, about combing slowly, picking apart bad tangles with my fingers first, slowly combing through them til they’re gone, and still I get a few strands coming away at the end of it all. Less even that what I’d normally lose of my real hair, but I’m still paranoid because I know that this hair won’t be growing back. Is this normal? Or is it going to start looking tatty within weeks and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it?

And then there’s the emotional stuff. I can’t pretend it’s not happening anymore. And I have to deal with this transition of going from pixie-length and wavy to 18 inches and straight literally overnight. So far the only people who’ve seen this happen have been people who already know the story. But I have no idea how to handle others — people who know me incidentally, who know me by sight if not by name, and who have no idea why I cut my hair short in the first place. I’ve been walking around with short hair for almost two months, many people have seen it that way. So what do I say to the wait staff in my favorite restaurant, my neighbors in the apartment below, when they see me again and ask what the hell happened to my hair? For total strangers it wouldn’t matter, they probably will never have any idea that the hair isn’t real so I can say nothing and pretend that it is, but these people will know, and will wonder why, and I can’t think of a way to answer that question without it being completely, utterly awkward.

I won’t lie, but can you imagine how flustered you’d feel if you saw it happen, were shocked enough to ask, and then were told, “Oh, yeah, the chemo was making my hair fall out,” from someone that you really only barely know?

I can’t pretend it’s not happening anymore. I don’t know what to do.