Hey!

This is me!

You might say that I have pretty long hair, and I would have to agree.

The thing is, I use my hair as a security blanket. The longer my hair is, the more comfortable I am. This stems from a pretty long life of being bullied, and a childhood dealing with alopecia.

When I was little, I had alopecia areata, a condition which causes the hair to fall out in patches on the head, and in some cases, all of the body, and completely. I had three spots, ranging in size from a nickel to an egg. Daily, my mother would apply a topical corticosteroid to my scalp to help treat the problem.

You can't actually cure alopecia. You can only treat it. One of the reasons I keep my hair so long is because I'm worried that if I cut it too short, my alopecia will come back. Every time my hair breaks or "sheds" more than normal, I always wonder "Is this it? Is it back now?" While I do actually like short hair, and I'm envious of other girls that can rock it, I just can't bring myself to do it. Except for the time that I decided I was going to cut my own bangs and needed a haircut to match them, I've always had long hair.

Secondly, I've always been a chubby girl. For as long as I can remember, I've had some meat on my bones so to speak. While I generally present myself as okay with the way I look, most of the time, I generally dislike myself. And on some days, hate myself even. "Fat" girls are always looked down on in society. In movies and television, the token fat girl is always the sidekick, the best friend, or simply the fat girl. In the new movie Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves, Snow White has these special shoes that take her from being ugly to beautiful. For example, with the shoes on, she is tall, pretty, and thin, but when she takes them off, she gets shorter and rounder, and therefore less desirable. I was even bullied throughout middle school, and even into high school for being fat. I found it hard to believe anything good about my appearance.

Especially when posts like this go around, praising a woman for eating more food than I could in a whole day,

It's hard to feel good about myself when posts like these exist alongside it.

There are photos of myself that I love, like this one of my good friend Heather and I:

Or this one, after my friend @therubygeorge's epic performance at Sexy Bingo:

However, there are photos of myself where I just wonder "How could someone even like me?" Photos like this:

Or this:

I keep my hair so long because I get so many compliments on it. "Wow, your hair is so pretty!" "You've got such long, beautiful hair!" "I wish I had your hair." I guess I'm just worried that if I don't have enough hair for people to look at, they'll notice how unattractive I'm supposed to be.

So yes, my hair is a security blanket. After not having some of it when I was younger, to having it be pretty much the only attractive thing on me, I definitely use it as a shield. Maybe I'll cut it some day, I mean, I'd really like to, but I don't think that day is coming any time soon.