Gratitude: On Her Baldness

Two weeks ago, I lost half the hair on my head, and most of my eyelashes. 

Wait. Stop. This is not about my baldness completely! Well, it's a little bit about that, but I think a suddenly-bald girl is entitled to some kind of drama. I just wish this magical season of shedding could have occurred around the leg area, and a bit of eyebrow, but strategically. That's the thing about awful, disastrous events; could we tweak them a bit, they would cause a tiny amount of stress, but really just lead to a happy ending for all.

If this was an indie movie, I’d be rocking a headscarf and playing drinking games based on how many times the word bald came up while I spoke. Sadly, I don’t know Josh Radnor personally, or he might have based a character on me in his next film. Except Happythankyoumoreplease already featured a bald girl. Curses.

So my hair is something I have always taken for granted. All those years I spent hours in the shower were blamed conveniently on the density of my annoyingly thick curls and how tough it is to lather, rinse and repeat. Eyelash baldness is another story. One endearing anecdote I like telling on first dates is how I pulled out all my lashes once when I was five, waking up one day to my mother screeching at me. ‘Stupid girl’ was what I started believing my name was at age five. But then the lashes grew back, and this episode became what I like to think is an interesting story to tell. Please note I haven’t really had very many successful first dates. Or second. Or fifth. They all decidedly belong in the realm of absolute crap, which is a realm five miles ahead of the tragically ridonkulous.

But we’re talking about my hair, or the lack thereof. Your hair, whatever it looks like, is something you always think will be there. Because you’ll always have the constitution of a 24-year-old with miscellaneous unfortunate habits.

One of my unfortunate habits is to sometimes be very starry-eyed about possibilities. Meet a new man who does not punch through windows for shits and giggles? Keeper. Have an old job where your capabilities are acknowledged every twelve years or so? Someday you’ll be exactly where you deserve.

One such starry-eyed juncture appeared a couple of years ago – to be precise, on a Shab-e-Barat two years back. Why not pray for this, asked two-year-ago Zainab. So she did. And she was focused. And she forgot all about the tradition which says this is the night the tree of life drops leaves named with people that will depart that year, and grow new leaves to signify new lives. She prayed as she looked out her window at a dazzling moon. Because these guys are totally gonna be around forevs, she thought. I need to pray for the things I want next.

So when my lack of prayer to keep the guys that were already there led to a year of misery, because don’t you know it – those guys I thought were bound to me for at least another few decades left. And the best allegory I can find for them right now is my hair, which I watch disappearing slowly from my life, though I’d thought I’d always be rocking my stupid, annoying, fulla hair head. So I guess what I’m trying to say is…of course ask for more, and work for more, and hope for more, but the stuff you have? Hang on tight and love it as best as you can.

P.S. every time I say hair, do a shot. I like Yogi Tea myself, but life is for the living, so you may experiment. There you go. Drinking game!

If you’re wondering if I got the thing I did pray for – well I did. Tenfold. What this mystery prayer was – that’s just a story for another day.