a pilgrimage of hairdressers and french fries.
When I was 25 years old I went through a phase of having a hairdresser come to my house to cut my hair. My housemate had a “guy” — who was actually a lovely lady — who would come to your house rather than endure the salon life. I remember the smell of bleach wafting through the air while we made the obligatory small talk. You know the kind. The awkward laughter. The occasional “mmmm” and “oohhh”. My current hairdresser is amazing, not just because she can serve up a dope cut, but also because you can be completely comfortable sitting in silence with her. Before making such a find, this lovely lady chatted away while bleaching the red out of my precious mane and we soon came to the topic of her breast cancer.
She told me the story of how after she was diagnosed, her friends disappeared. That while people had showed up for the drama, they didn’t stay for the fight. I remember thinking that her story was my greatest fear, and I immediately set about victim-blaming her in my mind for such a failing. If people had abandoned her then she must have done something wrong because surely nothing so terrible could happen to you without your consent. It made me feel safe.
Less than a year later I combed those bleached locks out of my head and stuffed them into a plastic vomit bag. I had been diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia and was in the beginning of the horrific treatment regiment. People showed up. They brought books (I couldn’t read them from the chemo fog) and they brought flowers (I couldn’t have them in the ward due to the absence of an immune system). Old friends and partners came out of the woodwork to varying degrees. I lived. And then they were gone.
The first to go were the old friends. They say that dating an ex is like eating stale french fries — this is true of all exes. When a friendship stops working for you it will never work for you. The euphoria of death bed fantasies ostensibly coming to fruition does, in fact, wear off. People who weren’t capable of being an adequate support for you when you’re just doing life won’t be able to support you when you’re doing chemotherapy because you’re simply not a match. Just because a french fry is soggy, it won’t stop clogging your arteries, no matter how badly you want the salt hit. French fries are delicious and taste amazing but any dependent or long term relationship will make you sick (hopefully they’ll find their burger someday).
They say that if a friendship lasts more than 7 years it will last a lifetime. They say this because that’s how long it takes every cell in your body to replicate and die. You’re a new you. I’m not sure if there’s much in the way of scientific evidence to confirm this wisdom, but there’s something viscerally accurate about it. When undergoing chemotherapy — this process is sped up. Every cell is killed off and the new one takes its rightful place. It gets right up in there and cleans house — it kills off what no longer serves you.
I endured 2.5 years of house cleaning and a further 1.5 years to recover from it. When it was all done I no longer felt like I fit into my life because I was literally a new woman.
After spending that long fighting for your life it’s incredibly hard to keep undervaluing it. When someone treated me in a way I felt was less than I deserved then I would tell them. Blood, vomit, and tears went into buying myself every second of the time that I have and I will no longer spend it on quantity rather than quality.
One by one the people who featured in my former life fell and I began to notice the pattern. Was it me? Was I completely unlovable? Surely, like the hairdresser, I must have done something wrong to warrant this fate? Spoilers: It was me and I did do it to myself.
At the beginning of this year I went on a pilgrimage of sorts. When I was only just well enough, I went back to work and right back into living life in the way that I had before. It chaffed at me until I couldn’t bear to wear it any longer. So I ripped it off and left it behind. I ran and ran from the crippling terror — the prospect of ever again feeling the way that I felt whilst I was in hospital. Terrified of once again facing death and finding myself full of nothing but regret for how I had lived my life.
According to a video I saw on Facebook, Matthew McConaughey says that in order to figure out who we are, we need to figure out who we are not. He said a bunch of other really poignant stuff but I didn’t pay a lot of attention because he was a wearing a shirt. While the prospect is terrifying and uncertain, I know now that the be-healed girl (wearing every kind of extension possible: hair, eyelash, and nail) who walked into that hospital is not the bald and be-sneakered woman who walked out.
I left my old life behind and tried on some new ones. Along the way, my body healed enough to let my mind see the last of the people who I loved deeply but who no longer served me in a healthy way. After confronting it and grieving it — the final thread had been cut and I was set free. In the midst of my grief, I inevitably asked myself (for the last time) what is wrong with me? What do I keep doing wrong? Why don’t the people I love, love me back in the same way? In that moment an incredibly obscure memory came to me. It was a TV show or a movie — I still haven’t been able to identify it — where a man was complaining about not being able to make a relationship work. He bemoaned; “I’m about to be divorced for the third time! What am I doing wrong?!”, to which the other man responds; “you keep getting married.”
That’s exactly what I was doing. Every time I felt lonely I would blame myself and chuck some more humans into the void. I was throwing my love and energy away and was devastated when I wasn’t hit with it back. When people make you feel lonely the solution is not to add more people. I needed to stop getting married, because loneliness is just a feeling — not a state of being nor a personal failure.
These days I spend my time on myself and the people who make me feel connected and valued. Quality over quantity. I’m still wandering around aimlessly trying out new things and figuring out who I’m not because I won’t be the woman who lets Matthew McConaughey down. I’ve been going steady with my current hairdresser for over 4 years now. Why? Because I have discovered that who I am not is someone who enjoys small talk while getting their hair cut.
