The Bald Man Cometh

I hate this time of year. The weather’s a proper awkward bastard.

In the day, glorious sunshine, sometimes reaching 17 degrees plus. But at night? Well, I hope you packed a jumper big lad as it’s f***ing baltic.

Once upon a time, I’d be able to make do. Thick-ish overshirt and a couple of shandy’s and bob’s your uncle (I mean, I’m not sure if he is, it’s just an odd saying), cold no’mo. But I’ll be honest, losing my hair and shaving my head has slightly exacerbated the situation.

Heat rises. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. You lose all your heat from the top of your head. It’s maybe one of the only takeaways I have from high school science. That and burning magnesium is cool as hell.

The first month of accepting my fate as a lankier Jason Statham was an eye opener. Sure, being bald has its benefits…Pissing it down and need an umbrella? Not me mate. Literally water off a ducks back. Shampoo? More like champagne mate with all the money I’m saving on that pointless expense. Shower gel, head to toe. Same with sun cream. In fact, applying any lathered substance to my body is like going through a car wash. It’s the lazy man’s dream.

There are however, negatives to becoming bald at the tender age of 27. Number 1? Being bald at f***ing 27. Number 2, getting mistaken for my bald father by neighbours even though I’m forty years younger. The list goes on, but by far the biggest disruptor to my life was the sheer coldness. So shove your £200 North Face arctic blizzard coat. They mean naff all to a bald man with no wooly hat to protect him from the elements.

Going bald for me was always inevitable. It runs in the family, especially on my dad’s side. Pop us in a line-up and you’d struggle to decipher if you were actually looking at a dozen eggs.

I was only young when my dad sat me down and said if there’s one piece of advice he could ever give me, it was to “not fight it. It’s inevitable.” Sage f***ing advice. Never has a truer word been said. I never did fight it, but losing my hair at my age was early, even for our family curse.

I don’t have any proof, but I’m pretty much convinced that the process of losing my hair was intensified by my battle with OCD.

For years, my OCD managed to lay dormant. Sure, it still impacted my life, but nowhere near as much as it does now. Things intensified after my final year of university. Like many post graduates, I struggled to get a job. For six months, I managed to get by working as a manager at a local play centre in my hometown, but the worry of not being able to get a full time job weighed on me like a tonne of bricks.

Not only did I notice my hair slowly shedding, I also noticed a distinct lack of appetite and this lanky bastard only got lankier. From there on out, in periods of high stress, I noticed my hair line getting thinner and thinner until in the end, it looked a bit like Friar Tuck (that fat lad with the baldy bowl cut from Robin Hood), or as my mates lovingly labelled it…the toilet seat.

Stress is clinically proven to affect hair loss. So it makes sense to me that this would be the case with OCD and the stressors it naturally puts on my body.

I held onto my hair for way too long and in all honesty, it looked bloody stupid. One of the best decisions I ever made was to simply accept my fate and join the baldy brigade.

OCD and indeed any mental health affliction, is by its very nature, shit. It’ll undoubtedly put your body under an intense amount of stress. Anyone that can truly go through hell and back should be proud of their resilience.

When everything is said and done, everyone is fighting a battle that can’t always be seen. Something like hair loss, can be likened to a battle scar. So wear your scars loud and proud. I am and so should you.

It’s definitely hat weather. But wooly or cap, I’ll let global warming decide.

Baldy’s unite.

Bald Eagle