i am NOT my hair.

The oncologists told me that I should be prepared to start losing hair around Christmas. That was their word: prepared. It was issued with emphasis and a direct, meaningful look. For me, though, the least of those hair-related worries and preparations have been cosmetic. The practical and psychological ones are more important.

First and foremost, losing your hair makes a mess. Other cancer survivors have told me vivid stories about digging birds nests out of the drains, and Gordian knot-like tangles out of the vacuum cleaner. Everybody woke up at least one morning with hair in their eyes, their noses, and/or their mouths. One woman with shoulder-length locks said she woke up feeling as if her legs were tied together, and discovered clumps of hair twined around her ankles and toes.

Gross.

Minimizing the cleanup, therefore, means minimizing hair length well ahead of time. I had already gotten a pixie cut but it was still, mostly, several inches long. About a week after my first chemo treatment, I grabbed Steve’s beard trimmer, dialed it down to a minimum setting, and buzzed my hair down to military length. The result made me look like Evie in V for Vendetta, which suited my mood just fine. I’m fighting a war and I don’t really care who knows it.

Rawr.

About a week and a half later, I was night-owling with a mediocre movie when my head started to itch. I didn’t realize I was scratching, or what that itch meant, until I felt and saw the bristles of hair caught under my nails.

I turned off the TV, went into the bathroom, and looked at myself in the mirror: the itching had produced a smooth bald spot about the size of a half-dollar coin just over my right eyebrow. I ran my hands all over my scalp and discovered a stripe of baldness along the back of my head. That led me back to the couch. Sure enough, there was a smear of very short hairs caught in the upholstery.

That was the moment I learned the third truth: hair lost to chemo falls out in random patches. I spent about twenty minutes that night trying to exfoliate my scalp, thinking that all of my hair was loose. Not so. I no longer resembled some fierce heroine in a fight-the-power epic. I looked like a victim of nuclear fallout.

Fuck.

I flashed back to the final pre-chemo consult with my oncologists. They wanted to write me a prescription for a wig. (Yes, that’s a real thing.) I’ve worn wigs before in various stage productions and I hate them. The glue gives me a rash and the knowledge that I’m wearing someone else’s hair gives me the creeps. Still, the doctors insisted I should have the wig prescription just in case – because they assured me I would change my mind.

I stared at my patchy, half-bristled, half-shiny scalp and it dawned on me: this was a moment I was supposed to be freaking out about having cancer, and the moment I was supposed to fixate on my hair. I was supposed to be so revolted, so frightened by the sight of my altered appearance, that I should do anything to ‘normalize’ myself.

Seriously?

I’m not oblivious to the beauty standard: I just don’t measure my self-worth against it, and I don’t take comfort or solace in trying to live up to it when I’m under stress. And I am under stress, a great deal of it. I’m not working. I’m not cooking. I desperately want some sort of creative project to capture and keep my attention, but my chemo-befuddled brain won’t focus. Those are the yardsticks, the boundary markers, that define my sense of ‘normal.’ I haven’t got the will or the inclination to give anything cosmetic that kind of power over me. Not now, not ever – so I shaved my head.

I shaved my head to make one thing, and all things, simpler. I didn’t want to wait for the rest of my hair to fall out on its own. I wasn’t about to tolerate the discomfort or the mess, nor the introverted part of me that doesn’t like being conspicuous. Since my diagnosis, I’ve seen two women my age out in public with their pale stubbly heads defiantly uncovered. To me, they looked brave and strong, and therefore beautiful.

Of course, Boston succumbed to an arctic cold snap just after I removed all that natural insulation. The nape of my neck hasn’t been warm for days, so I’ve added woolly scarves to my indoor uniform. But when I look in the mirror now, even though I look drastically different, I still look like me. I look like the me of my choosing, and that feels fantastic.