This morning we made the final cut.
Stroking my back as I sat hunched over the bath, sobbing quietly, Rob gently shaved off the last of my patchy hair, taking it down to the tender scalp.
It was a much needed step, and a relief in many ways. Over the past two weeks, as more and more of my hair has fallen out, my skin has become increasingly sore and itchy. Each morning my pillow has been coated with a carpet of short prickly hair and I have woken with hair in my eyes and mouth. It was time.
But watching the last downy tufts drop silently onto the bath enamel below me was nonetheless hard. Much as Rob tried to assure me that I was unveiling my true warrior self, a part of me felt denuded, vulnerable and, like Samson, stripped of my power.
I was struck by how different it felt the last time we took the clippers to my head, crafting my first soft crop. That was a family affair, in the garden, in the sunshine, with a strangely celebratory atmosphere. A pre-emptive cut in anticipation of losing my hair. I had a palpable sense of still having the upper hand, of being in control, of choosing my response to what was coming. I felt strangely powerful.
This morning's cut felt qualatively different. A quiet, muted, intimate moment, with the rain lashing the bathroom windows. An act of submission rather than a moment of defiance. A reluctant relinquishing of control to something bigger than me.
Last time we cut my hair I looked in the mirror and felt energised by my radical new look. This time I looked in the mirror and a creased alien with unfathomably large eyes stared back at me. I could not find myself in what I saw.
On opening the door to the postman soon after I was reminded that with no hair, there is absolutely no hiding that you are having cancer treatment. My short soft crop felt stylish, something I might have chosen. But no-one opts for stubbly baldness.
While I have decided to be open about my diagnosis, what, when and with whom I share it has, until now, been in my control. But a bald, white pate is a publicly visible badge, an unavoidable marker which strips away a fundamental element of privacy and autonomy over how I tell my story and the assumptions that people will make about me.
It is also a constant reminder to me, and those closest to me, of our reality. In the early days of my diagnosis, even strangely after surgery, we all sometimes almost forgot that I had cancer. I felt fit and well, life continued (in as far as lockdown life continued) and nothing looked very different. But a bald head demands attention. Now, every time I pass a mirror, every time I use the bathroom, every time I put my hand to my head and recoil at its scratchiness I am reminded I am in cancer treatment. There is no longer anywhere to hide.
Like the other physical manifestations of my constantly changing reality - my scar, the picc line, the chemo infusions, the steroid crashes, the near constant sense of nausea - I will of course adapt and get used to having no hair. I already am. It is temporarily confronting, but it does not floor me.
But, as I am finding time and time again, the far bigger challenge is to let go of my need to control, to soften my resistance to what is and to somehow find acceptance.
I truly hate that I am going through this.
But wishing won't make it so.
I am not in control right now. I know that only by truly acknowledging this can I find the calm resolve I need to carry me through the undulating twists and turns of the coming months.
But some days that it is harder to do than others. And today was a hard day.
