My Hair- A Love Story

Trichotilimania and other adventures

Some of you who know me from Twitter may remember me posting about the many issues I’ve had with my hair over the years - the main one being trichotilimania or compulsive hair pulling- a condition I’ve suffered with since adolescence.

Certainly when I wrote those posts, I received messages in my inbox from those who were also going through it or had children who were. So, this substack is the longer version of those Twitter posts.

My Hair - A Love Story

Age 3

Mum leans over me with her familiar, long wavy dark hair. It’s so pretty.

“Take a good look at this”

She says.

“Because it’s the last time you’ll see it. I’m getting it all chopped off.”

I take her in like a beautiful painting. Even now, I remember her standing in that bedroom with red cord coat and fur trim. Like Rose Red in my book.

She returns with a horrible short perm. It’s an assault to my senses. She doesn’t look like my mum anymore. I don’t like it. She uses a weird thing she calls an ‘Afro comb’ now instead of brushes. I want my mum’s nice long hair back.

Age 5

How I’d love to have hair like Keely Foley or Claire Gladwell in my class…..the tresses my bendy Sindy in her pink tutu has - long and glossy. Then there is Nazia - the only Asian girl in my year. Her hair is the most strong and lustrous I’ve ever seen. Oh, to have hair so princess-like! I could put it up into a sleek bun or pony tail!

When it’s story time at school, I always choose a girl with long hair to sit behind

“Can I plait your hair?”

I ask politely. Then proceed to spend the next fifteen minutes in what can only be described as the most relaxing therapy in the world- listening to stories as my fingers twist and braid, gathering strands like the reins of a horse.

I look into the mirror at my own. It is thick and shiny but short and practical.

I don’t like going to the hair dressers. I want bunches and bobbles, hair slides.

“You’re only having a tiny bit off around the edges”

my mum always says as we enter. I sit down in the chair, have the pretty paisley wrap placed across my shoulders and this rapidly changes into;

“Two inches off, all round!”

I am not allowed to have long hair like the other girls. It is considered “too much messing about”.  My hair is ‘manageable’ and ‘easy’. I will never be the Sindy or Keely or Nazia. I begin to hate my hair.

Age 11

The problems happening in my home life are multiple. I find it hard to cope, my dad is in trouble with the police, dodgy men are always knocking on the door about his gambling debts. I have to hide, pretend I’m not in, lie to scary sounding fellas on the phone.

I’ve always bitten my nails right down to the nail bed, sometimes til they bleed. My mum paints the bitter tasting stuff on to try and make me stop. I don’t stop.

I don’t know how it starts, but one day I just start doing it - pulling out my own hair. First it’s just the odd strand, but soon it becomes a compulsion. I’m doing it again and again, don’t even realise I am. I run my fingers through it feeling the different textures - wispy, wiry, thick, thin and then I yank it out. At first this goes unnoticed. I have thick hair and no-one can see the damage I am doing.

But it’s not long before I have big bald patches on the back and sides of my head. The other kids notice and ridicule me. They can’t make sense of it.

Sometimes I lie and tell them I have cancer as it’s something they do understand and they don’t think of me as a freak when I say this. They offer sympathy instead, but then I am rumbled and the freak label returns.

I am the weird girl in class with the big bare spots on her scalp. Even when I am in the supermarket queue, I can hear the people behind whispering about me, speculating on what the problem might be.

Mum stops taking me to the hairdresser. Aunty Sandra is drafted in to cut it for me. I am an embarrassment.

Grandma wants mum to take me to the doctors about it, get me some sort of psychologist but mum says no I’ll grow out of it. Mum keeps telling me to stop, that I look like Friar Tuck. That it may never grow back and am ruining myself. If I chew it, she tells me the hair will end up in a ball in my stomach and I will die. This is not helpful.

I want to stop. I can’t stop.

Age 17

I am masking my hair problems like a pro these days.

I still have the trichotilimania massively, but I now have strategies to hide the damage. I learn to part my hair so as to disguise the problem areas. When I have overdone the pulling, I colour my scalp with mascara so it is not picked up on.

“Why do you always put your hair behind your ears like that?”

My friend’s sister says one day.

“I can understand why you do it but you then get that other bit and put it in front…”

she says. Comments like this make me feel uneasy. Can people still tell I have this issue or do I pass as ‘normal’?

If I go out on a night out with my friends I have a selection of wigs that I wear. They mean I can enjoy myself without worrying about it.  They are a means of coping but also fun. I can now have the hair I wanted. I am into glam metal so I can have hair like the women from Vixen or Elvira.

I tell Dino my boyfriend, as he has so many issues of his own, I feel comfortable in doing so. He is one of only 3 boyfriends/partners I will ever confide in. I tell other people that I just don’t like my head being touched. None of my friends know now, apart from those who remember from school.

Age 20 something

Throughout my twenties I learn to live with the condition and just get on with it. There are times in my life when it calms down and times when I am stressed I do it more, but it never stops. Even when I go periods without pulling it out, it never seems to fully recover. Feels like I’ve damaged it irreparably.

I can never fully relax with boyfriends incase they want to touch my hair or spot the problem. I make excuses when friends want to style it or ask about me going to salons.

I experiment with many hair colours and the styles my damaged scalp allows me. I disguise with coloured spray, hats and scarves.

I have resigned myself I can never visit a hairdresser but this ignites my own creativity and I fashion my own styles making the most of what I have.

Age 37

I’m pregnant. What happens over the next year feels like a miracle.

My hair is reborn. It must be the pregnancy hormones but nature floors me. My hair thickens, renews itself. I have the strongest, healthiest hair I’ve had in my entire life. Full of vitality. I feel as though the Universe has forgiven me for my ‘sins’. It’s my new start. I’m still tempted to pull it out sometimes but not nearly as much as I used to be. My hands are barely free anyway these days with a new baby.

Age 43

I’m around 43 and dyeing my hair as usual. Over the last ten years or so, I’ve settled on black. I’m not doing anything differently to my normal routine, but something suddenly feels very different.

I can feel my forehead tightening. Something tells me to look in a mirror and my head has changed shape. It is now the shape of a mushroom. The swelling seems to be starting at the top and working its way down. I start to become very concerned that it may spread to my tongue and block my airways. At this moment my partner comes home and sees me.

“You need to get to a hospital now”

he says

It’s an allergic reaction.

I’m driven to hospital where I am given a cocktail of steroids, antihistamine and antibiotics. They believe it to be a compound reaction to years of putting a substance called PPD on to my scalp. A substance commonly found in most hair colourants. For the next few days, I look like I’ve been beaten up. It’s clear that I will never be able to use conventional dye again.

Age 44

After a year of using henna which clogs my shower, stinks to high heaven and takes ages to apply, I am in despair. My ‘real hair’ colour is a mess as I see it. Years of trichotilimania has meant my hair colour is prematurely grey.  Wigs are ok now and again but don’t feel right to wear every day.

There is only one solution. A new start. I grit my teeth and shave it off. It is truly liberating and one of the best things I have ever done and of course, I can no longer pull it out because it isn’t there.

Age 48

After a couple of years, I have embraced my grey. I join a ‘silver ladies’ Facebook group that makes me feel better about the colour. I truly love it. There is just one barrier I need to break to have come full circle in self acceptance.

One day, my son’s barber says to me he would like to cut my hair. I have always felt too self conscious to ever attempt this.

I am ready.

I am nervous as hell. Will he say anything? Comment? He says nothing, just cuts. If only he knew I’d not had a professional hair cut since I was a child!

I get home and I can’t stop feeling the back of it where he shaved it, looking at it.

Finally in my mid forties, I love and have made peace with my hair these days and it’s a truly wonderful feeling.

I ordered a wig to go out in this weekend, but as I did, I thought of all the times I wanted to mask damage. How I wore hair pieces to hide behind.

This time I will be wearing the wig for pure fun.