Just a Hair Away from Ordinary

Back when I was told I had cancer and then informed that I would lose my hair during chemo, I didn’t care. I mean, I was fighting for my life. I was willing to sacrifice my hair in order to live. It was a no-brainer, right?

Right.

So during treatment and my subsequent baldness, I didn’t let it bother me.

Though, honestly, what the hell, cancer treatments? It’s bad enough to hear that you have cancer but do we have to lose our hair too? It’s just adding insult to injury, you know?

Now, though, I’m almost four years out from when I got my diagnosis. My hair has been growing out for over three years. It’s back to the texture it was before treatment, though to be honest, it’s a little thinner/finer than it was before. At least it seems that way to me.

But it grew. It came back and for the past few months, I’ve hated it. I wore it in a ponytail every single day. It was past my shoulders and felt limp and thin and stringy; not pretty, nothing to be proud of.

So, one recent Wednesday (how’s that for bringing it full circle?) I took a quick shower after screaming at Olivia for making a mess during her own shower (OMG, that is a post for another day…) and after my shower, I grabbed the scissors and made that first irreversible chop. I cut a good four inches off my hair.

Then I went to Alyssa’s room and handed her the scissors with the request, “Please make the left side look like the right side.”

And she did. She did a great job. She snipped and cut and did that angled thing around my face and you know what? I finally, FINALLY like my air again. It falls somewhere between my chin and my shoulders. It’s pretty much all one length and it looks so much fuller and healthier. I stand in the front of my fan for maybe two minutes each morning and flip it over to get it kind of dry and then I go. I don’t use product, I don’t scrunch it, I don’t straighten it or blow it dry. I just wash it, comb it, use the fan to dry it a little and I go. And it’s so freeing.

I haven’t felt this free about my stupid hair since the say my mom and girls shaved my head on the sixteenth day after my first chemo.

I just realized that I no longer had to grow my hair out just because I could. I didn’t have anything to prove anymore. I don’t have to let it keep growing just because I’ve been bald. I can cut it and enjoy it and still be grateful for it. I can stop fighting with it and let it be a little shorter and a lot cuter.

Cancer took a lot from me. It took my health, it took my freedom, it took my hair. But I’ve come so far since those days of fighting cancer…and so has my hair.