I’m Going BALD!
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Stress, Hair Loss, Humor, Covid, Life

Okay, okay, not really. But you should see what I pull out of the shower drain.

For my entire life, but for the few dumb times I’ve had my locks shorn completely, the below photo is what my hair has always looked like. I WISH I had that face, but I do have that hair, even if I do keep it colored these days. For now:

Raphael Lovaski on Unsplash

Losing my hair while I’m losing my mind. Sound familiar?

It’s been happening for a while, this hair loss. I am famous among my pals for hair that reaches my butt. Even at this advanced age of nearly 68, I adore my long locks, curly and full, looking like a lion’s mane.

You will understand my consternation when it started to come out in great handfuls, every time I brushed it, and when I washed it. Like this morning, when I grabbed four double handfuls of the stuff out of my shower drain.

Add that to the piles I pulled outta my hairbrush almost daily this past week.

After the year we’ve had? Will you kindly PLEASE?

If you’ve had one hairy bitch of a year, and kindly, who hasn’t, this might also be happening to you. This isn’t an isolated event, nor is it all that uncommon. However, if you love your locks like I do, and you didn’t exactly sign up to effing go BALD on top of everything else that happened this year, you might not be particularly chuffed about this latest side effect of The Year That Was.

Let’s talk. The first time this happened to me was many years ago when I lost 85 pounds in a year. While I was mindful about how long I took to get it done, still, my body had to adjust. Part of that was losing a whole lotta my crowning glory.

It came back, eventually, but not before I stressed out about it. That was well before the Internet made researching this kind of thing a lot easier. That helps, but honestly.

Helluva year.

This year, we had Covid. AND I got hospitalized with infected kidneys and kidney stones. AND I had a horrific car crash. AND I moved to a new city. AND we promptly got surrounded by horrific fires. AND I lost thirty pounds way too fast from stress and because I couldn’t eat. AND I smashed a pinky toe. AND I had to have my ovaries out. AND now I have infected cysts in my right arm. AND I have to have a shoulder procedure in January. GAH!

This, however, was the easy stuff.

Photo by who?du!nelson / Unsplash

I lost people, too, but not like many of you who lost family. Mine are long gone, at least my immediate blood family. Still, we all have paid one heckuva price, to say nothing of the extreme stresses brought on by the events of summer with BLM and George Floyd, and the ongoing, neverending, rage-inducing idiocy of the Orange Pus Face, Mitch McConnell and all the others dancing around the Maypole while America suffers. Don’t. Get. Me. Started.

That’s just America.

As I have deep connections all over the world, I get emails from folks begging for funds I don’t have right now, to help with the devastation that their governments are sidestepping or ignoring or deny.

Hey. We can relate.

And let’s just not even address what happened with the one place I thought was relatively safe, Medium, which, well. You know. If you’ve been on here long enough, that is. If I write about it again I’ll be bald by midday.

Here then is a touch of sanity if you, too, are wondering if it’s time to learn how to make an afghan out of your unattached locks:

If this is happening to you, don’t panic. Because if you panic about your hair loss, guess what?

You will lose even more hair.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Who said the Goddess doesn’t possess a sense of humor?

Look. If this is the least of my problems (it is), I’ll take it.

I’m upright. I’m healthy. Bumped up and bruised, but healthy.

And at the end of this year I may end up bumped up, bruised, and bald.

But as you can see, that looks pretty good on a lotta folks:

Deposit photos

Who knows? I might come to like this look. If things continue, looks like we all might have more in common than we thought we did.