Keeping Up Appearances
Note: I wrote this post last Thursday when I was still feeling down about my appearance. I'm feeling much better about it now, but I wanted to post this as a record of my thoughts and feelings.
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You’re familiar by now with my recurring preoccupation with the way in which outward appearances are affected by cancer. As the weeks have passed since I shaved my head, I have come to realize that it’s not the reaction of others to my appearance which affects me most, but my own reaction.
My fellow commuters on the train platform have grown used to the sight of me and my head coverings by now, as have my classmates. The stares of strangers affect me much less than they did in those first few days without hair; actually, I hardly notice them now. But I still react whenever I see myself, and that reaction is hard to accept sometimes.
If you’ve ever gotten a dramatic new hair cut or color, you’ve had the experience of catching sight of yourself in a mirror or a window and being momentarily taken aback by the vision of yourself as a stranger. You have that moment where you think, “Whoa! Is that me?!” It takes a couple of seconds to reconcile the fact that although it’s your face looking back at you, you look completely different. But then, after a day or two, you get used to the new look and soon you don’t even notice yourself in the mirror or window. It is no longer a new look, but a part of you.
That acceptance hasn’t happened to me yet. I am still shocked by my “new look” when I catch sight of my reflection. It is shocking to me to see myself each time I remove my head covering. I think that I expected to become accustomed to this look, maybe even to embrace it and to be able to wear it with confidence. But each time I see myself I can only think about how different I look and about how the person looking back at me is not me at all.
I know, rationally, that it is temporary and that eventually I will have my hair back again, but that doesn’t make it any easier. The way I look to myself is a constant reminder of everything that I am going through. It doesn’t help that I also don’t feel like myself. I’m not comfortable with myself as a patient or as someone who doesn’t feel good most of the time. I am not comfortable with myself as someone who is always tired and has no energy and who sometimes can’t concentrate very well. But when I see myself in the mirror I can’t ignore or escape the glaring evidence of the fact that I am fighting a horrible disease and that it is affecting me. I can’t see the way I look as a fashion statement or even as something temporary. I can’t embrace it. Instead I think about how much I want my hair back and how much I just want to look like the me that I have seen in the mirror for the past 41 years.
At first I thought that my preoccupation with appearances was mostly just a result of our society’s preoccupation with the importance of appearances. I thought that this would be a good lesson for me in ignoring and overcoming those social norms and in learning how to be less concerned with my own appearance. I have discovered that for me it goes much deeper than what society says is the “right look” or even what I think is the right look. It is not about fashion. It’s not about what other people see and think; it’s all about what I see and think. For me, my appearance is an outward manifestation of what I think and feel about myself. My loss of control over that outward manifestation continues to be a struggle for me.