It has been awhile since I went and posted a blog. I think maybe I have been trying to avoid talking about my alopecia. It's been a roller coaster. I've tried every possible treatment option. It's tough when they are all experimental. Anyway. I had 95% of my scalp hair back and 75% of my own eyelashes on my wedding day. By the end of my honeymoon it was falling out again. I go see my dermatologist every other month and get painful steroid injections in my scalp and take multivitamins and biotin. I'm supposed to use this greasy topical gel that burns my scalp for 7 days on and 7 days off but it's so annoying and you have to wash your hair the next morning after using it. I am terrified every time I wash my hair that the little growth I have achieved will fall out again. I see so much hair coming out every day. This is my 3rd cycle in 5 years in which I lost my hair, it mostly grew back (from treatments and painful medicines) and now falling out again. Oh and I haven't had eyelashes or eyebrows in probably two years. Not having leg arm or bikini hair is a perk for sure!

I am rambling now. I am so sick of wearing wigs. It's itchy and hot and I have been wearing this one for almost two years because I can't afford a new one. It's really in bad shape and I am very anxious every day they people can tell it's fake. I work in an investment bank that I couldn't possibly pull off the bald look. I wish I could. Sometimes I wonder if wearing the wig is somehow constricting the follicles from growing. Who knows? I wish I had a friend who understood what I am going through. I stopped talking about my hair loss and wearing wigs and not having eye lashes a long time ago because I think I was just getting on their nerves.

Being 28 and a woman with largely bald head is really hard. I'm grateful I'm not sicker with something worse but sometimes I just get so depressed and so low and I can't come out of it. I saw a man on the metro last week who was bald with no hair or eyelashes. He looked about my age. I wanted to hug him. I still think it's so much harder in our society to be a woman with alopecia. But I looked at him a few times and he looked away, embarassed or ashamed...and I realized it's no easier for a man my age to lose all of his hair.

Sometimes I am walking to work and the wind is so strong and I have to hold my wig down. Or in the summer it's so hot and I have sweat dripping down my face. I know it's all cosmetic but I have so many scars inside and so much hurt an anger and bitterness and anxiety. I just want to be normal. I wish I felt beautiful. I look at photos from college with my long shiny blond hair and thick eyelashes and I just want to throw my computer across the room. Sometimes I think I'm being punished because I wasn't nicer or kinder to people in the past.

I wish there was some way to meet people in person and talk about this. I just wish I had someone to talk to who knows the heart ache and the resulting guilt you feel when you think about how much worse it could be...it's just hair for gods sake. Right?