There’s a certain kind of satisfaction that comes with picking at my scalp. My fingers delicately probe the base of my hair part for dandruff. I pinch at the base and drag my fingers down the length of my hair. I examine my finger pads for tiny white specks. Regardless of whether I see the dots or not, I go back in - if I saw any, there must be more; if I saw none, then I must have missed them.
I’ve done this for basically my entire life. While writing this essay, my fingers have been dying to leave the keyboard and return to my hair to search for imperfections. It’s not that my scalp is itchy or irritated or in need of relief - rather, the act of picking allows me to relax. I convince myself that I will pick so much that I will no longer have dandruff. This logic is, of course, illogical but I cannot stop myself. It is compulsive and comforting and the effects are nearly invisible to others.
I used to do much worse to my hair. There was a year of elementary school in which, rather than dandruff, I plucked full strands out of my head
My hair was changing around that time, puberty causing it to go from straight to wavy to curly. I envied the other Filipino girls in my class who had glossy, silky, straight manes that flowed down their backs. When they tilted their heads or turned to look at something, the movement reminded me of the effortless sinew of a river stream flowing over rocks and around curves. I wondered why my half-Filipino genes had not blessed me with the same features. My hair resembled an angry frizzy triangle on my worst days and a flat-ironed lion’s mane on my best.
While sitting in my bedroom one day, I examined each strand up close. I imagined the shiny straight hair I desperately dreamed of. As I looked closer, some of my follicles appeared straight. Others were kinky, thick, and jagged, bending at odd angles and in strange directions. My 10-year-old brain came up with a solution - I could simply pull these bad strands out. Then, only the straight ones would remain. My hair would be like that of my prettier classmates. Maybe, with our lustrous tresses to bond over, we would become best friends. We would sit at the same lunch table, the backs of our heads looking uniformly beautiful. They seemed to do everything with ease - school, friends, life. Maybe my hair was the only thing stopping me from that same grace.
My fingers inched toward my scalp, feeling around for the kinks, the angles, the thickness I was looking for. As I found one, I plucked it out. It felt easy. The prick of hurt was satisfying. People said beauty was pain, didn't they?
I focused on one section towards the back of my scalp, just below where my part ended. I sat at my bedroom desk, the dark wood stained with pink and blue nail polish and acetone. With my chair tilted back and my feet resting on the printer on the ground, one hand worked on math homework while the other was buried in my hair. Every week or so, I’d notice the pile of hair that had accumulated on the floor next to my chair. I would sweep it up with a paper towel and throw it into the trash. I ignored any worry that drifted into my mind, convincing myself that I would soon have beautiful locks. Soon, I would be the self that I’d dreamed of being.
For weeks and weeks, it continued. If I was anxious, I picked. If I was sad, I picked. If I was happy, I picked. It soothed me, it made my heart beat slower, it gave me something to think about other than the myriad of things I did not like about myself.
It was several months in, and my hair looked the same. I was still the same. I thought about this as I walked in a single-file line with my fellow fifth-graders back from music class. As we walked, one of my friends asked if she could braid my hair. Touched, I said yes.
She began to gingerly separate it into sections, pausing every so often to walk with the rest of our class down the hall. After a few minutes, my friend stopped. Worry and confusion trickled into her voice.
“Uh, Mia… I think you have a bald spot”.
My face went hot. I did not know I had a bald spot, but I knew that it was probably true and most likely my own fault (I’d recently learned about “cause and effect” in English class). I brushed her hand away, undoing the little progress that had been made on the braid.
With little to no surprise in my voice, I said, “Oh… thanks for letting me know”. I faked nonchalance. I asked for the elastic back and hastily pulled my hair into a ponytail.
I got home and searched for the bald spot. My fingers explored my scalp until I found it. The spot was about one-and-a-half inches in diameter and felt shocking. I could not believe I’d pulled that much out. Rather than beautiful, I now felt grotesque.
For the next several days, I wondered if my friend now knew of my secret. I wondered if she had told others. I wondered if she looked at me differently now.
I made up scenarios and lies to sell her. I imagined how she might rationalize the spot - maybe I was ailed by a mysterious disease, or maybe cancer, which was causing my hair to fall out. I stood up a little taller as I thought about it more - She shouldn’t think I’m weird because I could be a childhood cancer-haver, and she should really feel terrible if she’s going to make fun of me for my cancer-induced hair loss.
Despite that disastrous braiding attempt, things went on as usual. If she had told anyone, I was none the wiser. The incident scared me enough to stop pulling out my hair. As I waited for it to grow out, I resigned myself to low ponytails and buns, which nicely hid the spot. As months passed and it slowly grew in, I would absentmindedly reach for the back of my head. It began to feel like a boy’s, short and spiky. A not-insignificant part of me wondered if it might grow back straight and better than before.
I’ve tried to convince myself that that 10-year-old is leagues away from who I am now. But the desire to change myself runs all the way to the root. I still find myself feeling unsatisfied with my appearance, wistfully looking at others and wishing I had their features - their body or cheekbones or, even still, their hair. I look at photos of myself and I always find at least one thing to be unhappy about.
I still pick at my scalp. Occasionally, I will find a particularly kinky strand. I’ll pinch it between my fingers. I’ll look at it closely and pull it taut between my nails in an attempt to straighten it.
Sometimes, I’ll accidentally pull it out. I’ll toss the follicle on the floor, with little sentiment. Another piece of myself, gone.
Here are some things I’ve been enjoying lately:
essays/substacks
I Have Tried to Write this Story Seven Times by
(via )oh so you're a thought daughter now? should i call joan didion? by
/i will do whatever i want from
books
podcasts
Ik I already said it, but thank you for reading!!!! I hope this piece resonated in some way (and if it did, please subscribe/repost/send to a friend!).
xoxo,
Mia