Spring into action

It's official. After the most mild winter I can remember in New York it appears that spring is already here. Which means so many of my fears are also back- bright lights, sweaty make up, water, etc. I know I've mentioned it before but these things hold me back.

I have done okay this week. Nothing great and I'm certainly not pull free but I haven't gone pull crazy so I'll try and put it in the "win" column. I do, however, have less than 3 weeks until my vacation and about 4 until my cousin's wedding- the cousin that has trich but won't talk to me about it. She is getting married after being with her boyfriend for about 7 years and she has, as far as I am aware, been able to manage her trich and will be married with eyebrows, eyelashes and a full head of hair. I know a lot of us wish we could say the same.

I received a comment on a post yesterday and the reader was mentioning how afraid she is to tell friends and family about trich. I remember that feeling all too well. The one advise I can give (and i wrote a bit more about this in January 2010 if you want to look at more posts on this topic) is to tell people. I thought my friends would judge me and look at me like I was a freak with this unspeakable disease- they didnt. In fact, quite the opposite. They were supportive and wonderful and for the first time I didnt feel so alone. Admittedly I did have a good friend who didn't have quite the reaction I wanted or needed, but dont let that stop you. Your true friends and family might and probably will surprise you and likely have a secret of their own. We all have our shit. Even now, when i'm having a tough time with trich, it is a bit of a relief to have them know and while i'm not 100% confident when I am eyebrow-less around them, it is leaps and bounds more confident than I was when I was trying to hide it from them.

The funny things is that those people I want to speak to most about it, the family that has trich, just don't and won't talk to me. I still don't get it. All I want is to know how they learned to manage it- give me tips!! Are they afraid that if they talk about it it will come back? I want to try and understand where they are coming from but I just can't. And so I will go to my cousin's wedding and will be jealous that she has found a way to get all her hair back and to have wedding pictures with hair and I will continue to wonder how she did it. Because she won't tell me.

This is a very lonely disease. We feel as though we have no one to talk to, that we can't talk to those who love us for fear of what they will think and we often can't talk to those who even know about trich from their own experience because they wont talk to us. We avoid getting close to people and we carry the shame of what we do around with us like a ton of bricks that we have been sentenced to keep with us forever. We remain anonymous on blogs and support groups, refuse to go to meetings and retreats, because the idea of revealing ourselves is terrifying. What if someone one day makes the connection? What if someone reading my blog figures out who I am and that they know me, and then they tell someone else?

I sometimes see people without hair on the subway and am tempted to say something to them. Something simple like "hey, you too?" but maybe they have cancer or another disease and then I'll just be left feeling bad and alone again. Maybe they will be mortified that I know their secret and I will ruin their day. So I never say anything but I wonder. I look at how they do their make up and try to think if I would have seen their lack of hair if I was not so obsessed with hair and trich myself.

And so like every other post, I leave this one with a goal in mind and with the best of intentions. I'm hoping that I can show up at her wedding with at least partial eyebrows and with my eyelashes fairly in tact. Even if I stopped pulling today it would take weeks for them to come back in completely but something is better than nothing (and nothing is what I have now). I've heard that hair grows faster in warmer weather so my fingers (and toes) are crossed that this spring/summer I wont continue to hold myself back!