Just Guyton

I think I have a bad romance with my eyebrows.

They come. They go. They apparently have commitment issues.

And honestly, I would really like them to come back.

Living with alopecia has taught me a lot of things, but one of the biggest is that acceptance and liking something are two completely different things.

Because let me be very clear: I do not love everything about having alopecia.

I hate watching my hair come out in clumps.

I absolutely hate it.

But I can’t change it.

And I learned a long time ago through the Serenity Prayer that there are things in this life I can change and things I simply cannot. Learning to recognize the difference has made my life a whole lot simpler.

It took me a while to get there with my hair, though.

Back in 2020, I started noticing that my hair seemed a little thinner. Around the same time, I had gotten a little too close to a bonfire. A flame flashed up and singed off an eyebrow and the eyelashes on one side of my face.

Yes. That happened.

And they took forever to grow back.

I cut my hair really short around that time, too, and it seemed like it was taking forever to grow. But I had a perfectly reasonable explanation sitting right there in front of me. I’d just had a close encounter with a bonfire. Alopecia wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind.

Then things changed.

By 2024, my hair wasn’t just thinning anymore. It was coming out in clumps.

I had four bald spots on my head.

At first, I could move my hair around and cover them. Then I reached the point where there wasn’t enough rearranging in the world to hide what was happening.

So I started wearing a beanie all the time.

Then came the wigs.

And slowly, my eyebrows started vacating the premises too.

That first year was hard.

I cried.

I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me. I wondered if I had somehow done it to myself. I started dyeing my hair when I was about twelve years old, and believe me, I put that hair through the wringer over the years. So my mind went searching for a reason.

Was it something I did?

Why was this happening?

The serious hair loss started about six to eight months after Chris and I got married, and I remember talking to him about how upset I was.

He told me, “We’ll get through this. I’ll buy you any wig you want. Whatever we need to do, we’ll do. It’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.”

Eventually, I decided I wanted a pixie cut.

If my hair was going to be thin and uneven, I wanted to make everything the same length and start there.

I had my beanie. I had the wigs Chris bought me. We’d figure the rest out as we went.

And honestly, I wasn’t terribly worried about the missing eyebrows because I wear glasses anyway.

They do a pretty good job of eyebrow security.

People have suggested different solutions since then.

I’ve walked past eyebrow products in stores and joked with Chris, “Do you think I should get this and draw my eyebrows on?”

Absolutely not.

First of all, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’d be terrified I’d walk outside in the rain and suddenly have an eyebrow halfway down my cheek.

Now, if drawing your eyebrows on works for you, draw those babies on. If that’s what makes you feel good, I am completely in favor of it.

It just isn’t for me.

Then someone recently suggested that I could have my eyebrows tattooed on.

I actually have five cousins who are tattoo artists.

And if any of you are reading this, I hate to tell you this, but there are only three of you I would possibly trust to tattoo my face.

I’m not naming names.

Y’all can discuss it amongst yourselves.

But eyebrow tattoos aren’t for me either, and there’s another reason for that.

I have this little involuntary twitch. I’m not even sure how many people notice it, but it happens whenever it feels like happening.

So Chris, my aunt, and I started talking about what would happen if I decided to get my eyebrows tattooed and that twitch kicked in at exactly the wrong moment.

Chris started laughing.

“You’d have one angry eyebrow and one normal eyebrow.”

And that was pretty much the end of the eyebrow tattoo discussion.

Can you imagine?

I take my glasses off and can’t even see everybody looking at me. Meanwhile, one eyebrow is perfectly pleasant and the other one looks like it has been waiting all day to speak to a manager.

No, thank you.

Somewhere along the way, though, these conversations started becoming funny.

Chris started joking that I look like Lady Gaga.

And I realized I have a bad romance with my eyebrows.

That’s something I don’t think everyone understands about living with something like alopecia.

In the beginning, it wasn’t funny.

When I was watching my hair disappear and wondering what was happening to me, I wasn’t standing around making Lady Gaga jokes.

I was sad.

I had to get through that part first.

But I could spend the rest of my life being sad about it. I could scream. I could throw fits. I could send my husband out to defend my honor with an Oscar-winning slap.

But number one, I’m not a damsel in distress.

And number two, why would I let something that I have no control over control me?

That’s where acceptance came in.

Acceptance doesn’t mean I like losing my hair.

I don’t.

My natural hair has finally grown just long enough that I can put it into the tiniest little bun, and I’m pretty happy about that. But it’s still very thin, and as much as I don’t want to, I’m probably going to have to cut it again.

And that’s okay.

Because I also just got a new wig.

She’s 24 inches long.

She’s wavy.

And she’s pink ombré.

Yes, I said she.

She’s fabulous.

That’s one thing I’ve discovered through all of this: wigs can actually be a whole lot of fun. I can change my hair color, length, and style whenever I want without touching a bottle of dye.

Want long hair today?

Done.

Want pink tomorrow?

Done.

Want something completely different next week?

There’s a wig for that.

Unless it’s summer.

I’m not wearing one of those things in the summer.

Absolutely not.

Acceptance doesn’t always look profound.

Sometimes acceptance is crying until you’re finished crying.

Sometimes it’s cutting your hair because that’s what works right now.

Sometimes it’s wearing a beanie.

Sometimes it’s putting on 24 inches of pink ombré waves.

And sometimes it’s laughing with your husband about the possibility of accidentally tattooing one permanently angry eyebrow onto your face.

The Serenity Prayer taught me something I’ve carried with me for a long time: some things are mine to change, some things aren’t, and life gets a whole lot simpler when I can recognize the difference.

Alopecia happens to fall into both categories.

I cannot control what my hair follicles decide to do.

But I can control what I do next.

I can hate the clumps of hair that come out and still laugh.

I can miss my eyebrows and still refuse to draw them on.

I can be disappointed that I may have to cut my hair again and still get excited about my new wig.

I don’t have to pretend this is wonderful in order to accept that it’s part of my life.

And I don’t have to let it control me just because I can’t control it.

Although, for the record, if my eyebrows would like to end this bad romance and return to my face, I am accepting applications immediately.

—Guyton