To what’s skin deep…

CHAPTER 20

To what’s skin deep…

In the summer of 2016, I’d just moved to Nashville a month earlier. It was the summer following my first, and only, year of college. I was living on my own, and weighed myself every day. I had noticed for the last year, that I was losing my hair, not enough that someone would notice, but enough that it scared me. It’s a weird thing, hair, we’re so attached to it. I’m so attached to it, I love my hair. When I started losing it, it made me feel weird, I felt like I was losing something that made me, me. This is not about how I surmounted my fear, and chopped all my hair off, no, definitely not, I’m still losing my hair and I’m still scared. For the last year or so, I’ve been taking hair supplements to encourage regrowth. I’m not sure if they’re working, because every time I take a shower, or run my hand through my hair, hair! Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably not as dramatic as I’m describing it, but it feels dramatic, it feels drastic. However, that summer, in 2016, I gained 30 pounds in less than a week! Yeah, I know, take that in. In less than a week, I woke up one day and nothing fit, I didn’t recognize myself. To this day, we’re not sure what caused it, I eat very heathy, and don’t snack, especially at that time, because I was living alone. To me the weight was almost worst that the physical pain I’d been experiencing, for years at that point. It was worst because, until now, I could hide that something was “wrong”. Now, people could tell something was wrong. All of a sudden, I didn’t recognize myself, people had physical reactions to seeing me and again, no one knew what was going on. For a good year, following the weight gain, I worked out so much, trying to get rid of it. Nothing worked. Eventually I gave up. After 3 years, I was down 35 pounds, not because I’d done anything specific, we’re still not sure what happened.