At least I can laugh about it

Once upon a girl there was a little time…

Eh…
Let me try this again…
She had big blue eyes…
And her hair used to be blond.

By the way… Do you know that Evian spells naïve backwards?
It does.

But that has nothing at all to do with this story. I’m just not sure how to start…

The girl I am going to tell you about was kind of a wreck. Faking sanity she was constantly struggling to make ends meet. She noticed in the mirror that she had started to look old. She used to look…, well, …younger… She was self-centered and completely lost. Lost in translation. Lost in time. Lost in space. You name it. Apart from being completely lost she always kept extremely busy. She was always trying harder, aiming higher, running faster, pushing further. Something was bound to happen. And eventually, it did.

One time due to a lot of stress this girl suddenly started to lose all her hair. Just on a few little spots, at first. Not a big deal. Yeah, right. Later, there were more spots than actual…hair. She looked a lot like an old man. Now I’m talking really old here, people. So she decided to shave her hair off. All of it. For a couple of minutes she felt really brave and cool. But then she started to cry. She didn’t look at all like Sinéad O’Connor. Not at all. She looked like E.T. Or Gollum. Or a mix of E.T and Gollum. Pale, dry-skinned and hairless. Then she lost her eyebrows, to make matters worse. Later she lost her eyelashes. Eventually her legs were perfectly smooth. Not that she cared about that. She was too busy missing her eyelashes. She wore shades. She wore scarfs. She wore baseball caps. She wore hats. She finally swallowed her pride and got a couple of wigs. The girl was not happy whatsoever. She felt more lost than ever.

What was she supposed to do? She decided to make some changes. Things got better. She decided to change jobs. Things got even better. She decided to try to relax more. Her hair started growing back. On certain spots. She now looked like Ronald McDonald. A bald clown with curly hair on the sides. Even though she wasn’t entirely satisfied with this hair-do, she managed to smile into the mirror again. If you would have seen her, you would have smiled too. Eventually she had hair again. Only, it wasn’t blond any more. Her hair was now hazelnut brown and afro curly. She felt thankful still, having hair, having eyebrows, having eyelashes, and she started to think the afro curly hair looked kind of cool if you wore a hippie hairband. She had always felt like a hippie at heart anyway, so why not have hippie hair, right? Anything is better than bald. Trust her on that, people. As her hair grew longer, it got a bit less curly. And there’s a wonderful invention called a straightening iron too. Today, her hair looks almost normal. She looks almost normal. (On the inside she still has a lot of issues however…)

Lately she has started to worry again, about a few growing bald spots on her head, though. What if it’s started happening again? Is Gollum going to re-surface? Didn’t she tell him goodbye already? And in the same time, she knows that if she worries too much about this, that will add to the stress, and her hair condition will get worse. So she knows she shouldn’t worry. She knows she should relax. Chill. She knows she should allow herself more “me”-time. Eh, more "her"-time, perhaps. In her head, she knows all this. She also actually feels ashamed to even worry about this issue. It’s not like she has cancer. It’s not like she’s going to die or anything. But she just might lose all of her hair. Again. What changes does she need to make this time in order for her to feel better? Can she even prevent this from happening again? She tries so hard to live a good life. But there just seems to be something she is missing, something she is lacking. Is it exercise? Is it healthy food? Is it time alone? Is it God? Is it vitamins? Is it sun? Is it peace within? Or is it love?

Soul searching, peace searching and wig searching/

Johanna