My name is George, and I am 21 years old. Of course I have my bad moments, but who doesn’t? I have been living with alopecia for nearly 8 years now and I have to admit, it’s been quite a journey.

I was first diagnosed with alopecia at the age of 13, I vividly remember the first time I noticed those little round bald bastards. I was at home with my brother and he noticed this spot on me, naturally I ran like crazy and invented the mirror to mirror system-that was later going to come into a lot of use-as to see the back of my head. Two or three spots later, I had booked an appointment with one of the many who were to come dermatologists. After explaining my condition and casually bombarding me with the idea that I might loose all of my hair at some point, I returned home in tears. My hair was such a big deal for me, they were long, straight and hazel, perfect on a sunny day-and might I say, a girl magnet! Through April to August, I had almost lost the entire proportion of my scalp hair, and finally took the decision of shaving what was left of it. Until my birthday arrived in October, I had lost the remaining hair and my eyebrows. To make it a great New Year’s Eve as well, I celebrated the loss of my body hair too!

Alopecia Universalis; never expected it to be honest. Close friends all new what was wrong, classmates kept asking, and I kept shying away, out of fear, out of embarrassment. It was a lousy year for me and it kept getting worst. A hat was permanently ‘glued’ onto my scalp, and a downward head tilt decorated my image. Every time someone tried to remove my hat or accidentally fell off I reacted like someone ran a spear through my guts. I was devastated, had low self-esteem, low expectations, low standards, low image of my self. As you should know, at the time, you can never realise how things work in your favour after all. You only view the bad side, and that’s what I did for the next four years to come. After a year or so from falling off, my eyebrows came back and boy, was I glad. After that I enjoyed getting teased about my ‘bushy eyebrows’!

Thankfully, friends never left my side. Each and every one of the people who I was happy to call best friends, helped me in my journey and even though I received the cheesiest lines ever said in the history of the earth, I was happy to have them by my side, caring for me. On the other hand, some people I held close, proved to be just strangers when my image went down. For those people, I am happy to have separated from. Hats became my thing, hats actually became me. I felt like my life was on pause and I waited on my hair to grow so I could continue living it. For the first five years, I tried EVERYTHING. Every single treatment that was made up and claimed to cure alopecia, I tried them all. I tried the religious way, I tried the spiritual way, healing crystals, healing Saints. Nada, nothing, complete baldness.

There’s only so much a person can take, and I had it to my limits. Five years after all is a long time. I was about 18 and it was the last year of high school when it hit me: ENOUGH! I thanked my parents for all the effort they put and explained to them that I didn’t want them to worry about a single thing. I didn’t want them to see alopecia as a problem anymore, only as fact. Their son had alopecia, so what? And that’s exactly how I felt! It was about summer at that time, and within 5 months that I stopped caring not only I had hair growing on my scalp, I recovered every single hair I ever lost. By Christmas I was raving the Balls and the Bashes of my school, and I was flying in heaven!

Some point after recovering my hair I came to think. Growing my hair back didn’t change me, it didn’t make people like me more, it actually did nothing. Of course it made me feel better about my image, but only me. Suddenly it didn’t mean that much. I should probably have told you, that before alopecia, I was the most introvert person in the world. I was shy, I was afraid of talking to people I didn’t know, I even considered talking to people I knew! By the time I finished high school and after the 5 ‘numb’ years of my life, I can safely say that I was the most popular kid in school. Even with the hat, even with alopecia. Actually, not ‘even with alopecia’, because of alopecia! I could then see clearly, it helped me open up like I never dreamed of, it help me grow into a fine young man that I always aspired of being, it helped me live my life without the fears that were haunting me, it helped me be as I wanted to be. During alopecia, I have tried scuba diving, hiking, skiing, windsurfing, camping in the wilds, all things I would have never done if it wasn’t for something to push me into becoming a social, fun, intelligent, aware, caring and a high self-esteemed human being.

During the last year part of my hair has fallen again, but I genuinely do not care! I get out of my house with the same alopecia patterns showing on my shaved head but I do not wear a hat anymore, I accepted that my hair is not there anymore. I know the reason, even if I like to blame it on army stress and afterwards university stress. I know that the fear that something as superficial as my hair could fall off again got to me. I also know that when I face bigger problems in my life and stop caring about poor alopecia my hair will not ‘feel the need’ to fall ever again. So, thank you alopecia, for curing me mentally and helping my way though the journey of life because alopecia, fellow reader, is my ride and it is a damn fine one.

Embrace alopecia as a part of yourself, see it as who you are and let others see the way you feel. I also strongly recommend getting rid of any hat or other things you use to cover your head, as soon as you feel like it. Don’t over think it, the more you hide your problems, the more you hide yourselves. I’m not saying that it’s easy, every good thing comes at a price, and this one’s worth fighting for, you only need some time to realise it.

Do not procrastinate; face your ‘problem’.

Have your family above all, your friends and yourselves.

We are different, be happy about it!