My hair is falling out. Not in dramatic clumps, but a slow constant fall, like a persistent drizzle on a winter\u2019s day. I find it sliding down my body, stuck to the back of my shirt, collecting on the bottom of my socks. Every time I touch it, it wraps itself around my fingers, and then inevitably finds its way to gagging me in my food. It has never been thick, and seemed unrelated to the other hair on my body which grows coarse and dark and everywhere, making my eyes water whenever I remove it. It was not a physical feature I would get complimented on, nor something I ever got insulted for, so I didn\u2019t really think about it too much. Now it is all I think of. I seethe at the naivete of my former self, being so blas\u00e9 about something she didn\u2019t know could be taken away from her. Although I don\u2019t know what I would have done differently to be honest, worn it down more maybe? What is left on my head now grows like a whisper, ready to get lost in the loudness of my sobs as I watch it pool into the sink while I brush it. I don\u2019t want to brush it, but I speak to my therapist about anxiety, and avoidance, and self-care, and so I know I must. She tells me to braid it. As though if I wrap all the pieces around each other, they will feel a sense of community and not leave me. I don\u2019t think it works but I do it anyway. Every night I brush my hair and braid it. I am gentle. I do not pull. I tell myself affirmations, I tell my hair it is pretty, and I love it. Still, it falls away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have not been feeling myself lately. Last year I started waking up in blood. When I was young, I used to bleed through my pyjamas every month, and then just seemed to outgrow it, my period becoming an adult like the rest of me. Until I started waking up in blood again. Time is a continuum I guess and now I am walking back through my own teen years as I pad to the bathroom and scrub my knickers clean. It is late and I am quiet. I do not swear or stomp. I will not make a scene just because my body is. I wring the knickers out and hang them over the shower rod. I strip the bed and put the sheets in the washing machine. I don\u2019t have the energy to remake the bed, so I lay a bath towel on the mattress and lie down, rhythmically moving my legs against the stiff cotton, trying to wriggle away from the pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t remember what happened first, the falling hair or the sadness. I think they came at the same time. You shouldn\u2019t speak in absolutes, but I feel comfortable stating that no one likes their period. On occasion it could feel nice to have a reason to make a couch bed and watch trash tv, but these are things I do anyway. I don\u2019t need to bleed for this. It took me a few months to figure out what was happening, that the intrusive thoughts went away when the blood came, that my scalp wasn\u2019t shining through from an overly tight ponytail, that it wasn\u2019t just a bad month but that every cycle was getting worse, the darkness deepening. Days where I thought about crawling into the oven. Sometimes I wanted to tell a man what I was thinking because I\u2019m a good girl and all I think are bad things and maybe it would shock them which would feel satisfying, but if you tell a man you\u2019re thinking bad things he would think it\u2019s sexy things when it\u2019s not, it\u2019s about running a razor straight down your face. It\u2019s about collecting your hair to make a nest to sit in and set on fire. It\u2019s about crawling into the oven. Everything annoys me and the world feels like it is screaming in my ears, and it won\u2019t stop, and the internet tells me it\u2019s anxiety or stress or some kind of mild OCD, but I know it’s my breath, my skin, my existence. And then the blood comes, and it passes. It passes. And now I am big and funny and loud. So much! But a good much, like if you could have a whole hot air balloon inside your tiny apartment, that is me. I am better now. For a few days. I wouldn\u2019t cry when I brushed my hair on those days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You hear stories about women who go mad from their own bodies. Women who become monsters and drive their children into lakes or women who go live in the forest with a familiar and make magic. These two examples seem wildly different to me, but people talk about them in the same breath as though they are just as bad as each other. Don\u2019t get any ideas about fleeing society, you may as well drown your own children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I search a combination of words online \u2018hair loss + period\u2019 and \u2018Why do I want to die PMS?\u2019 and end up on long abandoned message boards, reading advice from 2009. Like most of the internet, the conversation is overwhelmingly American, and so littered amongst the concerns that no one is taking them seriously are questions about insurance, and complaints at the staggeringly different cost of male pattern baldness drugs and what is on offer to women. \u201cDrugs don\u2019t work anyway,\u201d user1794 writes \u201cyou should massage your scalp every morning with castor oil.\u201d \u201cRosemary oil\u201d responds a deleted account. A reply underneath these states \u201cYou must go to Mexico! You can do a full scalp rosemary oil treatment every day and IT WORKS. I went for 5 days to a resort in Oaxaca and my hair grew back even thicker than before. My husband is happy he has something firm to pull again.\u201d There are jokes about mid-life crises; that men go buy sports cars and women go insane. I realise I am middle aged too. I had forgotten because I am a millennial, and so like home ownership or retirement, this felt like something that wasn\u2019t going to happen to me. I search \u2018Is menopause when my hair falls out?\u2019 but the answer is indefinite. Googling \u2018menopause symptoms\u2019 results in an alphabetical list of everything medically possible to happen to humans. I try to find the resort in Oaxaca, but I think it is shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I buy the most expensive rosemary oil I can afford. One of the posts on the message board said you should make it a little ritual, so I light a candle and put on an ambient playlist even though I feel stupid and worry that even with the curtains shut, the neighbours can see me. There was disagreement online about the time needed for best results, but I think 20 minutes is a good start. I begin by pouring the oil into a cupped hand before realising that this will leak out between my fingers, and I am going to get oily anyway, so I shift to pouring it directly on my head. I rub it into my scalp and work it down through the strands, trying not to focus on how much hair is clinging to my fingers. It\u2019s boring and I have sat directly on the floor for no reason except I thought it fit the \u2018ritual\u2019 so now my back aches, but I carry on. I did not think to set an alarm, so my phone is greasy with fingerprints as I jab at it to check how much time remains. When I am close enough to 20 minutes, I switch to combing the oil through, before braiding it. I don\u2019t feel anything, but I try to tell myself this was nice, and that doing nice things for yourself is important regardless of the outcome but when I lie in bed that night, I talk out loud to my hair and threaten it to behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I go to the doctor and say that I am having trouble being a woman. That my PMS seems to be worsening. That my period pain is so much sometimes I feel nauseated. That my moods feel unstable. Not a rollercoaster wildly swinging me up and down between emotions, but a long walk down a steep cliff, blindfolded. I\u2019m scared of myself all the time. Every time I close my eyes the pictures are wrong. It\u2019s frothing blood and open veins and rotting flesh and a lust for meat. It\u2019s blinding rage and restlessness and a catatonic suffocation. I tell her my hair is falling out. I show her pictures I have taken of my hair, the piles I collect on the shower wall, the pieces I pull from mouth. I want her to see inside me and find what is wrong in here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPlease test me.\u201d I beg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou want me to test you for being a woman?\u201d She says and laughs a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo, but I hurt all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat is being a woman.\u201d She reiterates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t normal\u201d I say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is normal.\u201d She insists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I buy iron pills and magnesium and green powders. I keep oiling my hair and it keeps falling out. There are small firm bumps coming through on my scalp and it crosses my mind I should go back to the doctor, but I am sure she will just tell me this is also normal for a woman. Everything is normal for a woman if that thing is shit. Now, if you were feeling good? Concerning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch videos on TikTok and YouTube of women talking about pollution and patriarchy and media pressure and that this is why our bodies are revolting \u2013 in both meanings of the word. An influencer does a story on micro plastics and says this is why our periods have become more irregular. I write a comment on her video \u201cI\u2019m so full of micro plastics that when I took my tampon out it was back in its wrapper.\u201d Which I thought was funny but her reply to this just says \u201cDisrespectful\u201d and I am confused about how a joke at my own vaginas expense can be interpreted as disrespect. I read an article that hypothesises when men mine the moon humanity will end because it will change the tides and destroy women\u2019s cycles. I read an article that says PMS is so much worse now because we don\u2019t have enough children and if we just submitted to men like the bible says we should, we would all feel better. I read articles about hysteria and slavery and medical experimentation and pain tolerance and barbiturates and Xanax and backyard abortions and weight gain and eating disorders and freeing the nipple and breast feeding and nipple hairs and chin hairs and porn and whores and Madonna\u2019s. I read articles and rub my scalp and my hair falls out and the bumps on my scalp get harder and bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think about shaving my head and then Sinead O\u2019Connor dies so it feels like a sign. I buy an electric razor at the shops and come home, psyching myself up, but chicken out at the last minute and just trim my pubes instead. You have to be so beautiful to be bald, and on my best day I am just cute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I talk to my therapist. I tell her I am braiding and oiling and I am doing my very best to only say the nicest things to myself, but I am also full of rage and venom and feel like a monster who will spontaneously combust 3 weeks out of the month. She asks if I am exercising. She has read about cutting out dairy. She tells me she sees how hard I am trying. I cry and then after the session go and oil my hair. The bumps are much larger now and poke through my braids. They are a pearly white and feel a bit squishy to touch, like rubber. I feel too exhausted to be concerned about them but have also started to like touching them. I worry them under my fingers and push gently on them. It feels good, like poking a bruise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was little the girls in my class would sit in a circle during recess and play with each other\u2019s hair. It was comforting and sweet but as I got older, I didn\u2019t like to be touched by people anymore, especially on my head. The intimacy felt too much. When I cut my waist length hair off in my early twenties my mum told me \u201cNow you look like a grown woman,\u201d and a colleague at work said, \u201cMen hate short hair you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wake up in blood again. It\u2019s early enough to still be dark but late enough that I may as well get up for the day. I shower and watch as blood and clots and hair slide down my legs to the drain. I have to empty the drain every time I shower now, as it gets so clogged with hair the water will back up and overflow if I do not. I sit down on the shower floor, remembering a meme I had seen that says sitting in the shower is a universal sign of hitting rock bottom and I must admit, being naked pulling hair from a drain does feel pretty low, although it\u2019s also just incredibly gross. I think of a story I read about a woman who had a doppelganger crawl out of the drain made from her own faeces and hair, and it stole her life and pushed her down the toilet. She climbed out and tried to ask her husband for help, but he didn\u2019t believe it was really her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the cramps are bad, I will rock myself back and forth. The repetition and movement are soothing. I am rocking and the cramps are moving through me, and my insides are twisting. The bumps on my head throb in sync with my heartbeat and I rock and push on them and rock and push on them. I spend hours rocking and pushing until I tire myself out and fall asleep on the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wake up because I hear a soft crack near my ear. I touch my head and feel something sharp and when I pull my hand away and look at my fingers there is a drop of blood. I force myself up and into the bathroom and check the mirror. The top layer of one of the bumps has come off, littering my hair with small white shell-like pieces. Sitting underneath, still covered by a sac, is a small, coiled snake. I gently break the sac, like I am trying to pop a pimple and not make a scar and fluid runs down the side of my face. The snake uncoils and extends up, rooted by its tail to my scalp. It is green, iridescent, and just a little longer than the size of my palm. It makes a small hiss and then just waves around, like it is dancing to its own tune. This is an unexpected development which no message board I checked mentioned. I am not sure what to do so I just stare at it for a while. I stick my finger near its mouth, wondering if it might bite me but it just curls languidly around me before unwinding and going back to its little dance. I wonder if it is hungry, so I go to the kitchen and pull some beef mince from the fridge. I don\u2019t remember if snakes eat beef, but I do, and it is attached to me, so I make an assumption. I can\u2019t see where the snake is without the mirror, so I just put a little meat on my fingers and hold them near where I think it is. I feel its tongue find the scent and as it takes the mince, I hear another crack. I suddenly realise all the bumps on my head are eggs, and that they are hatching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spend the next day\u2019s watching the snakes emerge. I pull them gently from their sacs, and remove the shell and goo stuck to their bodies with the rosemary oil. I oil them until they shine like pieces of glass in sand. I don\u2019t have any hair left to brush, but they coil and braid themselves around me, like a community. I stare at myself in the mirror. I cancel my next therapy appointment. I sleep and I do not bleed. For the first time in months, I am not in pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw Caravaggio\u2019s Medusa in Florence a few years ago. She is behind glass and as I looked at her, I caught my own reflection. Her beauty was a violence and I wanted to smash the glass and free her and lick her eyes. The room she is in was crowded and a man moved beside me and as he did, ran his hand across my bottom and quickly up my shorts. I turned to find him, to stare into his eyes and turn him to stone, but he had already melted back into the crowd. I think my doctor was right. This is all normal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My hair is falling out. Not in dramatic clumps, but a slow constant fall, like a persistent drizzle on a winter\u2019s day. I find it sliding down my body, stuck to the back of my shirt, collecting on the bottom of my socks. Every time I touch it, it wraps itself around my fingers, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22136,"template":"","categories":[60,10],"class_list":["post-22229","stsp_text","type-stsp_text","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-29","category-prosa"],"yoast_head":"\n