Kaye's Days

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Indeed it is.

I’ve struggled with my hair for years. My family was obsessed with it. As a kid, my mother forced me to have my hair permed and professionally styled with extensions, not caring at all for my discomfort or how much getting extensions hurt. Trips to the hair salon were seen as essential to my living, and any protests were met with verbal/emotional abuse and accusations of me not liking to look “pretty”. As an adult, the obsession continued with my grandfather. Let me tell you, an old man obsessed with a young woman’s appearance is all kinds of creepy. Only recently has my family shut up about my hair because, frankly, I can’t afford a bi-weekly visit to the hair salon and I don’t have time for it.

I’m anemic because of iron deficiency. I have not had my hair permed since late last year, but I had no idea stopping those treatments meant your hair begins to fall out. I have been using certain hair oils – something I was recommended by people in personal life who aren’t family – but they’ve had no effect, and my hair is still falling out. Some advice-seeking in a Facebook group got me an interesting bit of knowledge: lack of iron can cause hair loss.

I did some research of my own. It turns out iron is necessary for hair to grow. Iron, the mineral I’ve been deficient in for at least eight years (when I was diagnosed with anemia), is necessary for hair growth.

Never did my hair-obsessed family mention this. And I’m furious.

I don’t expect them to know such a fact. I do expect them to care more that my hair is healthy rather than pretty. But they didn’t. Hair care has been a trial-and-error process for me because I only knew it as “washing, perming, and hair spray”, and I got sick of it. Only when my family’s obsessive behavior stopped did I care to try to learn if there were other ways.

I intend to see a doctor to ask questions and rule out other medical problems, but for the time being, I’m going to take some multivitamins I have and see if my hair changes at all. I don’t expect it to, but if there is a good change, I’m going to be both glad and angry. Glad because my hair is finally fixing itself, and angry with my family for not teaching me better hair care habits while growing up to begin with. At the very least, if it doesn’t grow, I’ll be happy if it stops falling out.