Depression And Tangled Hair: A Memory

Hey there, and welcome back to Growing Pains.

I just saw a video posted by a hairdresser I follow on Instagram. It was a young woman who came to this specific hairdresser; her hair was completely matted. A single, enormous knot. The video mentioned that the young woman had been going through a bout of depression, causing her to neglect her hair.

I witnessed the warmth and care of several women who worked for hours conditioning, brushing, and treating this young lady’s hair until she was finally free. She looked so happy and confident admiring her new hairstyle. I’m certain that for her, it marked a new beginning in her mental health journey.

But the lack of compassion in the comments was just appalling:

“How does that happen? Never brushed???”

“Poor thing? She did that to herself.”

“Being depressed is NO excuse for not looking after your hair.”

“Sorry, but it’s just plain lazy to let your hair get to that state.”

*All edited because these people not only lack an understanding of empathy, but also of basic grammar!

Reading this, I was brought back to a time when my hair looked the exact same. Just a mound of filthy, tangled tresses that could hardly be recognized as my natural curls.

In all honesty, I’ve pushed this memory to the back of my mind for a long time, erasing these two years of my life without even realizing it. I never want to think about how horrible it smelled and the pain of the sheer weight of my hair tugging on my scalp. I was so ashamed that I had let the knots get to that point, and no matter how much I brushed, washed, conditioned, and cut, I just couldn’t fix it.

I was eleven or twelve at the time, severely depressed and suicidal. I was weak from my eating disorder and I hardly got out of bed, let alone engaged in self-care. I kept my hair in a ponytail every single day, until one day when I finally found the strength to wash my hair. It was then that I learned that the entire bottom layer of my hair was a solid, knotted mass. I tried everything to detangle it. I convinced myself that if I chipped away at it a little bit each day, I could fix it. Looking back, cutting it off would’ve saved me so much time, energy, and suffering, but I loved my hair and I just wanted to return it back to normal.

I made sure to hide the knot from my parents. At the time, depression was still very stigmatized, and my home life was a wreck, so I was afraid they would be mad at me for not taking care of myself.

Slowly it snowballed into something way worse that ended up consuming all of my hair. I managed to keep the top layer detangled to hide the knots, but I was still so embarrassed. I felt like a disgusting failure, and any form of self-care that I used to be able to keep up just came crashing down.

It was a dark time for me, especially at such a young age. I was self-harming daily and both my confidence and self-worth had just plummeted. I managed to hide this issue from EVERYONE for about two years before finally confessing to my mom. Two years of shame, discomfort, and humiliation. Together over several days, my mother and I cut, brushed, and detangled until the knot was completely gone.

My hair was so thin; I had lost so much of it from all the cutting and ripping we had to do, but I was finally myself again. I made it a habit to brush my hair every single day after that, no matter how I felt. It’s one of the few habits I actually keep up even when my mental health is low, even if some days I really have to force myself to push through.

The moral of this story is that you never know what people have dealt with. What’s more, is that you never know exactly what mental illness can do to a person until you live it yourself. To those few miserable people in the comments shaming that young woman for seeking help after a dark time: You should be so ashamed of yourselves.

Please, be kind to one another. It doesn’t take much.

Love to ALL of you,

Alexandra