Baby Steps

     So I woke up yesterday morning, took a shower, and was doing my hair. Which means I put some moisturizer jazz in and some gel.  Just my normal thing.  And by the end of doing that, THIS is the amount of hair that ended up in my bathroom sink:

Holy crap!  And THAT was before I had any coffee!!

     Unreal.  It just kept coming and coming, like there was no end to it!  It was a horror show. For the past few days I had been noticing more hair coming out than usual in a day; for those of you who are not Curly Girls, here's how it works for us:  Everyone loses a bazillion hairs on their head every day.  Straight-hair people just shed hair all over the universe as they go through their lives (shame on  you!), while curly-haired people lose just as much hair, BUT it usually doesn't fall out and strew itself all around because it gets caught up in the curls.  So it sits there suspended in the hair on your head for the most part.  And when you shower or just kind of grab a ponytail of it and tug, a big bunch of hair comes out, hair that would have just shed all around as you lived your life if you were a straight-hair person.  Curly Girls will verify what I'm talking about.
     So, that being said, I'm used to a bunch of hair coming out all at once, and I had been noticing that instead of one bunch coming out and that was it, little quantities were coming out all day long.  Just for the past few days.  But I was fully  in my denial zone of "because I have SO MUCH HAIR I can lose a ton and that will equal the amount of hair a typical person has on her head and leave me with still enough to count as a full head of hair."  My powers of denial are awesome and elaborate.    
     But that sink full of hair just tipped me over the edge.  Visually it was just too much for me. I have been planning all along to donate my hair (might as well be as many upsides to cancer as possible), and all I could think is that stupid cancer was going to keep this hair falling and falling and by the time I went ahead to cut my hair, there wouldn't be much to donate.  And that made me very angry:  How dare you try to jack up my donation plans by wasting my hair, Cancer!  So knowing that facing that astounding amount of hair in the early morning was only going to mean so much more hair falling out during the rest of the day...well, people who really know me won't be surprised that I tend to take action when I get really pissed off. 
     So rather than waiting for Cancer to take away too much of my hair, I decided yesterday morning to beat it to the punch.  Screw you, Cancer!  I learned many things, among them: All the scissors in my house need to be sharpened.  And cutting hair is a skill I do not have. But strangely, I learned that being angry enough completely took away any sad, regretful, painful emotions I had anticipated about cutting my hair.  In fact, each time I sawed off a ponytail's worth of hair (I told you, my scissors are dull), I just felt more and more empowered.  It felt great!  Like I was in charge for a change, not Cancer dictating where I go and what I do and how I feel.  
     So I hacked away and then decided to get down to business with the clippers.  I was fully intending to go all G.I. Jane.  I was ready!  But...I guess my hair just requires professional grade clippers--I was mowing and mowing and getting nothing off my head.  Super frustrating!  I thought that if I just headed out to a "dude hair place" I would find some old, crusty barber who would just whip out the clippers and do a boot camp buzz without blinking an eye.  And that's what I wanted--no emotional attachment to hair.
     So I zipped out to Sports Clips looking like I had just tangled with some hedge clippers. And of all the luck, there were NO dude stylists in the place!  The woman who called me back to the chair was confused at first:  What do you mean you want me to buzz your hair?  You want a pixie cut?  What?  You want clippers?  All of it?  Why?  I explained that I was losing my hair to chemo.  She didn't believe it.  So I asked her to run her hands through my hair--and when her hands came out full of hair, she finally understood.  But she still didn't want to buzz off all my hair.  She kinda combed and roamed around my head and said that all the hair was coming off from the sides and the back--but strangely, the hair on the very top of my head seemed to be hanging on.  So she asked me to let her do a short hairstyle and promised that, if I didn't like it, she would then buzz it all off as per my original request.
     She got to work.  I didn't even want to look.  But as I heard the clippers going on the back of my head, I took a quick peek in the mirror.  And I said, "Well, this is going to take some getting used to."  And then she gave me a big hug.  And that's when I got a little misty.  Two tears made it out.  But that was it.  And then the poor lady was sniffling and crying the entire time she was working on my hair--it made me feel so bad for her!  The more emotional she was, the less emotional I was, so maybe there was some strange emotional transference going on.  She said that God must have intervened to make sure she didn't put on any makeup that morning because he must have known she was going to be crying.  Awwww.
     So, long story long, she did such a wonderful job and convinced me not to take my hair down to the very nubs.  And I feel super about it!  Even if this little hairdo only lasts a day and then I go into full patchy-head-zombie-plague mode, it will have been worth it.  I can get used to seeing myself without such a volume of hair on my head--it's an interim step before Kojak World.  And I'm hoping it will help me adjust to not identifying so much with my hair, and help me get used to me being "me", not me being "a person with long hair."  So I am going to just rock the short look for as long as it lasts!  Who knows, I may never go back to long hair!! That WOULD be a shocker!
     For making it through this long blather about hair, you deserve before and after pictures!
Here you go--and please know, my hair has NEVER been this short since, well, since I was likely first growing hair! No one has ever seen me like this!

November hair.  Awww...kinda miss you, hair!

Stepping out with my super cool mask on Monday!

     
    

Whoops!  Sorry, wrong picture!  Hi Charlize Badass!

You should feel it--so prickly!

Ms. Sassy Pants!