Ugly-Baldy?

Jai Sri Hari dear Os.me family. It always feels wonderful to come back here at Os.me, write my heart out and read about others’ experiences. This place is very important and dear to me. I do not ever want to run out of ideas to write on here, though I am feeling that, slowly, I am running out of things to write on. But today I have something that I really want to express…

I started loosing hair around seven years back when I was in high school. It could be owing to a lot of factors such as, hygiene, genes, stress, the side effect of the psychiatric meds that I took, and perhaps also because they were not properly cared and oiled from time to time. It started with thinning of hair and hair falling in small bunches. Soon, I had lost a considerable amount of hair.

Since then and till now, I have always struggled to look good in front of the mirror. I try to hide my bald scalp with all the hair that is left. I have hairs everywhere around my head but they have gotten sparse. They are not dense enough so my scalp is always visible especially from the front. I have still tried to make myself look good and thus the struggle…many a times to no avail, at least in my perception. All these years I have felt ugly due to the thinning of hair on my head.

How I wished I would have reached a certain age after my high school days when I would be in college and I would have kept long and bouncy hairs. That’s actually not what I usually wish for but still at least dense hair on my head would have made me feel handsome and at least more presentable. I would not have then shied from showing myself in front of others or felt super conscious of how I looked. At one time, I had started wearing a hat just to avoid being seen with my half gone hair.

I am very conscious about how my hair looks. I feel better sometimes when I apply shampoo or when the hair feels thick enough that I am able to cover my scalp to look like I have hairs on my head, otherwise I feel ugly and that I would have looked much better if I had all of them intact. I lost them too early even if we blame the genes. It has caused me self esteem issues and have been the cause of my under confidence. People used to stare at my scalp and not at me just because they noticed the baldness over there.

However, what I realised just prior to writing this post is that even Our Swamiji is bald and he looks so nice. So, even I loose all my hair I will keep a bald look just like Him, although I don’t think I will loose any more hair anytime soon because the hair fall has stopped. I now console myself that whatever hairs are left on my head are sufficient and they really are. It does not matter.

But there is another factor that has been the cause of my under confidence. And that is, being overweight. For the last ten years of my life I have been on the higher side of the BMI(body mass index scale). I have been overweight all this while, since I was in class seven or eight. 

Firstly, I get fat easier as compared to others. Genes are to blame. But I got fat. So my wrong fooding habits are to blame and I’m the culprit. Also the meds that I take keep me on the higher side of the weighing scale as there are side effect which increase my weight.

When I am at home I am at ease because I do not have to worry about how people will perceive me. They will not look at me like a ‘mota'(fatso). I am not that mota, but I have a paunch. I walk around freely when I am at home without fear of others’ perception but when I go to college I become conscious about my protruding tummy so I try to keep it inside by contracting the muscles of the stomach, which in turn makes me feel physically uncomfortable. I don’t have much fat anywhere else except my tummy and it has made me feel ugly. I feel ugly and like a fatso with my tummy when I’m in social circles and also when I look at myself in the mirror.

I have been doing this since school that is, to contract the tummy inward. But now, I have decided I will forsake this ritual and walk on freely just as I am and not as what I am not.

I cannot do much about my hair but I can be content with whatever hair that are left in my head. There still are millions of them(because we have scores of million hairs on our head). Plus I can work on my body image by working hard in the gym and regulating my diet. I lack consistency over there. I start exercising and with a right diet but then I stop it after few weeks and this goes on in a cycle. I will try to inculcate a habit of consistent exercise and right fooding by not eating too much processed food, sugary food items and food which is high on simple carbs.

I realize that having some lesser hairs on my head or having a round tummy should not make me feel inferior but I also have to keep in mind that I take good care of my body and maintain it well. As the saying goe—our body is like a temple. We have to take care of it in that way and I will try to do that.