What Alopecia Has Taught Me, Two Months Away From 19 – Taylor’s Update

In September of 2007 Taylor shared her story with the Women’s Hair Loss Project. She has now written to share her update with us.
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As of June 08 I began to be able to stand and walk, after beginning a new treatment that was made available to treat the nerve damage I had in my legs and back from my accident. Now, almost a year later I’m up as if nothing ever had gone wrong. I’m still getting a hang of the whole running thing though, it’s quite the sight. All my health issues completely disappeared, but alopecia decided to come back and pay me a visit.

My hair began to fall out in late November, just before I graduated from college. At first it was just a little more then usual when I was washing my hair. I reasoned that it was because I hadn’t brushed it for a few days so all the hair that fell out naturally had not yet been removed. It became more and more noticeable until there was just no convincing myself that I wasn’t relapsing. I was devastated because I felt that for once my life had been going right, and for the first time in so long I had the opportunity to just be a normal girl and fit in with everyone else. I felt like I was being punished, as ridiculous as it may sound.

One night in the early hours of the morning I came back to the Women’s Hair Loss Project to read what I wrote about my first experience with Alopecia. I felt like a hypocrite, talking about how inner beauty matters the most and there I was falling to pieces because I was losing my hair again. But I had to laugh at how much times had changed since re-reading what I wrote (especially about my ex!). This time around I was very lucky to have such a good support system; my amazing friends Jess and Matt who were there to pick me up off the floor and knock some sense into me. I really don’t know what I would’ve done without them. The biggest lesson I’ve learnt since Alopecia’s… graceful return is that what makes us different, makes us beautiful. Our hardships in life really define who we are as a person, and without them we wouldn’t learn and we wouldn’t grow. Alopecia makes me look unique, which is something I’ve come to embrace. I know so many people who look and act like clones, being a carbon copy of someone else would be a nightmare to me.

It’s been about 5 months since my hair began to fall out, and it’s still going. There’s more of it down the drains and on all the surfaces in the house then there is on my head. One night after spotting a single strand of hair on my dresser table it dawned on me how mundane it is to think that the amount of beauty someone is considered to have is measured by how many hundreds of thousands of these insignificant strands you have attached to your head. A quote from Morgan Freeman comes to mind, which has since completely changed my outlook on life. He said

“If someone prays to God for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous?”

I think being courageous means to take a bad situation head on and not run and hide, which is something I had to learn to do when I met a new group of people this year that I’d be spending a lot of time with. I felt the need that they should know about my hair loss, so I had the option of not wearing my wig if I chose to. I remember the look on their faces as I could see them trying to picture me without hair. I knew they didn’t quite know what to say or do out of concern of upsetting me, so I thought that if they could see I was comfortable with it then they would be as well. I think that jokes are a good way to make light of a tough situation, but unfortunately I really didn’t plan on needing one so it was rather impromptu. It got the laughs I was after, but in hindsight I really wish I had put some more thought into it. I stood up and said: “No worries, I look way better then Dr. Phil!”.

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