No Control

Curled up in a ball on the couch, she held a book in one hand and kept the other tucked between her legs. It was cold in her living room. After a while she let out a great sigh and dropped the book, face down on her chest. She looked up at the ceiling. The hand that was now free, as if on autopilot, slowly gravitated towards her head. She started nervously playing with her hair. This was her one extremely bad habit. When stressed, she would always play with her hair and this happened more and more frequently with all the long and tedious readings she had been subjugated to for university. With another great sigh she ran her fingers across her scalp. Her index rushed through the dense mass, then suddenly – nothing: a clearing, smooth, soft, completely bare. Horror-struck, she froze. “No… No… No… Not again…” She jumped to her feet and ran to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, she carefully parted her hair to reveal what she believed to be a bald patch. Just as she feared, there it was. Quickly she ran her fingers over her scalp, scanning for more. “One... two… three… fuck… four… five… Christ”. As she let her hair fall back down she noticed a bunch caught between her fingers. Her high stress level was back and so was her alopecia, but it was much worse this time around. What was she doing wrong? She had been doing so well, why did it have to come back? She glanced in the mirror at her now tearstained face. Who was she trying to kid? She had stopped eating and been losing weight again. Her lack of sleep was starting to become a major issue and she was alienating her friends. All for what? She did not know. Somehow she could not find the secret of how to simultaneously do well in school and take good care of her self. She was pissed at how difficult this was for her when she knew it was supposed to be a given. She didn’t have enough time. And now her body was deteriorating again. “Two more months, two more months… How will I even get there?” She had no control. They say you can’t stop the rain from falling; the same goes for alopecia-ridden hair.