Armpit hair.

I am attempting to write this to connect with others out there who have felt a similar way. I am writing out there to give those who struggle hope of treading water. Know that there is hope. I used to google, “people who recovered from depression”

“People who cures anxiety”

Those aren’t little problems. I am trying to document myself through this process. I am trying to vulnerably cover the healing and retracing portion of my “recovery” (or spiritual awakening?)

There is hope that the brain will heal, that the brain is plastic. There is hope of change and a hope of being you again. I am only reaching out for the people reaching back. In natural medicine, there is healing. This healing isn’t achieved by a pill, or a drug. This form of healing comes from within, from the earth, from God/“The universe”/Higher Power. Your mental state right now will not be your mental state for always.

Keep that hope alive.

———

I am going to shave for the second time. This is a really vulnerable moment. I kind of always understood my armpit hair to be an act of rebellion. I always understood my hair to stand for something that I had been carrying around for a very long time.

Firstly, I must address the narrative: do I think body hair is unfeminine, unattractive? I LOVED my hair; it was one of my favorite features at one point. However; I do not see it as anything more or anything less than a personal preference. I’ve been looking myself in the mirror lately admiring it shaved, yes. I have also looked myself in the mirror and admired mine (and others) wild armpit hair as attractive, yes. My story isn’t to shame the women who have body hair, and this isn’t to prove that shaving is better looking.

I have mostly had full-blown out body hair since I was 16 years old. With few exceptions. My armpit hair was Full-bodied with a capital F. I could out grow my man friends and had more armpit hair than my husband. I didn’t choose to grow it out based on looks, or custom. The reason I do things? Statements.

No, not attention. Statements. I felt like I pointed to a well established social barrier and said — it’s not true. I always felt beautiful and stunning — yet, objectified. And the armpit hair held a boundary around myself that was hard to penetrate. I needed that personal space. I was processing so much. I was such a wounded child, I was healing. And I am grateful for the wonderful years I spent with my amazing hair. It made me feel powerful at times. It made me feel like a human, a warrior, a plant-based/vegan/eco-activist gladiator.

And I don’t need that anymore. The truth is when I was 16 all razors were stripped away from us. And if we did choose to shave, we have to sing and use cold as fucking water — so, I stopped. I was in a lock-down styled residential treatment center. I had not self harmed for years at that point. I was not suicidal, at that point. I just wanted to be loved. I was a little girl who was ripped away from her parents in one fatal swoop. And everything was stripped away from me. And I resisted. I built an imaginary safety net full of grown out pubic hair. It forced me to weed out really superficial people. It helped me see where people’s beliefs lie. Did they love me for me? Or some image I had to contend to?

I stopped shaving. Taking away razors was only removing the symptom of the problem. The hate, the feelings, the trauma (aka the root causes) were still buried inside. Everything was buried inside. It just made everything appear better. Nothing was better, internally things were worse — just buried. I told my therapist? Here, another pill. Take it. Hurry.

My feelings, my emotions needed to come out and be processed. Writing was stripped away from me; my own diaries held above my head, causing me so much pain and distress. I blamed myself? How could I express? My expression were read, and I was punished. I stopped writing then. I had written for years, and I put down the pen.

Postpardom did what it did and made me pick it back up again. It forced me to create, it forced me to paint, to draw, to write, to take pictures, to make videos, to sit, to get in the bathtub, to cry. Because now, I HAD to survive, I HAD to find a way out. And no one had any answers for me.

No one was able to give me answers. This was a problem I needed to solve for myself. There’s no going back.

I had to process myself, my life, God and “hell” and death. It was hard.

I decided to take down the wall.

Healing is not linear, healing feel rough and like a dagger through the heart — if you pause enough to feel. No one told me healing hurts. Everything is a slow promise; a slow march forward. We all wear our different kinds of fortresses emotionally. It could many many different things. And everyone’s wall looks different. Don’t think the busiest person is the healthiest, and don’t think the most expressive is the worst.

I am learning to control this wild gift of energy that the universe had blessed me with. I am grateful for my change, my slow transformation, my continued transformation.

And once again. I love you for reading. I love you for caring. I love you for listening.