The thing about hair

Mamu touched my hair the other day and said: This is not the hair of the girl I birthed. What did you do to your hair?

I touched my hair, imitating her and said: I don't know. I don't understand what's happening, either.

But deep inside, both she and I know what's happening. It is age catching up. 

During my trip to Manila this time, the first thing I noticed about other ACFJ alumnae was that they had all lost the lustre in their hair. Germie used to have thick black hair-- yes, a bit undisciplined and sometimes crowding her eyes, but it was thick, black, leaning all the way down to the small of her back.

Biapasha used to have similar, straight, long, dark brown hair. Now, both my friends have a stack of graying, wispy hair sitting on their heads. 

The women at our Manila meeting, all came back looking more or less the same as they looked two years ago, except their hair had changed texture. More grays. Less shine. More unruliness. One of them has been through a major surgery, which she thinks might be the reason for the change in the quality of her hair. And there's perimenopause and menopause, riddling all of us.

My hair was probably the worst in the room. 

Something started to change gradually after my surgery, too. In Goa, Rubina coloured my hair blue and I loved it while it lasted, but the chemical started to make my hair dry gradually. I'm that girl who does not thrive under the impact of hair colour. 

Now, I've developed permanent curls from tying my hair up all the time. Especially, while it is wet. My grays have grown even more prominent. But the curls...I'm completely unfamiliar with them. I've never had straight hair, but it was never curly either. 

As a kid, I always wore my hair short because it was the easiest way for my parents to deal with the morning ritual. Short hair was one thing less to tend to. When I went to work on TV, I learned to re-bond my hair for ease and look. Re-bonding meant I never had to worry about styling it for TV. After my TV life, I was happy to just let my hair be and it was peaceful not to have to sit through the re-bonding hours. But now, that freedom I had taken for granted has taken the form of a revolution. I'm quite a Medusa at the moment.

I suppose the change in hormone levels (estrogen and progesterone at play) always has something to do with our hair. I haven't had my period for two months. It looks like I'm menopausing-- early. And I think the change in hormones have something to do with the way my hair is now behaving.

As a kid who had a lot of hair on my head, I wasn't very attractive. Or as a teenager, who always had a boy's cut. That's what they called it then. Boy's cut, meaning hair ends at your nape. But in my 20s and 30s, when I let my hair grow long, people told me I had lovely hair. I was learning to take the compliments in my stride and now I'm unlearning, because my hair reality is now different. 

My hair is a bird's nest right now.

The bird's nest has a lot of grays that my aunts and sisters cannot stand the sight of. Colour your hair! Use hair dye! But I've come to find comfort in the grays. They remind me of who I have become over the years. And so I keep them, hoping to be loved and heard just the same, despite my hair. 

Painting by Nhooja Tuladhar

 

Life of a perimenopausal woman

The body is a sacred place. It is a place of love, joy, pleasure, rest, restlessness, anger, anxiety, sadness, pain...of heat, of cold.

My body has been in shambles recently. I had experienced hot flashes when they put me on hormonal therapy after my surgery in 2023, so I had a taste of what it feels like. But who knew the trailer was only the tip of the ice-berg and the real show is much intense? 

I have difficulty writing these days because I cannot remember spellings accurately. During a meeting two weeks ago, my mind shut down. I could not remember the names of my colleagues or of the programs were working on. For a moment, I wished I could just disappear rather than have to make a fool of myself. But the names didn't come back.

There are a dozen other things I currently feel. My skin crawls, my ears ring, I get itchy spots, and I get terrible hot flashes and I break into cold sweats. My body is either on fire or on spikes. And when it gets cold, the night feels freezing. One moment I'm on the verge of burning, another moment, I sweat profusely.

I finally know what was happening to other women my age, when I had seen women wiping themselves off with tissue until the eyeliner smudged and the lipstick smeared across one cheek, or fanning oneself with whatever she could lay her hands on. She was struggling like I struggle now. On some occasions, I feel like my system is shutting down.

Mamu has been talking of these experiences for years now and I didn't even realize how hard this must have been for her.

I missed two periods this year. Last year, I missed one. In a few years, I will be 50 and I hope that the missing of periods will at least be a gradual process until then, instead of being something like hitting the wall.

Perimenopause is lonely and scary. I keep wondering what's going on inside my body. But no one knows. The body is sacred and the body also keeps its own secrets. 

Here's what we need to know.