-HAIR-

When she found out, she thought her life was over. She felt like curling up into a ball and hiding from life, the life that she thought would be long and happy, not short and sorrowful. Part of her just wanted to die, a way of escaping her depression. Should she play it safe and lose the thing that made her feel alive or risk losing everything?

She was 25, her life was on a high. She had just received her dream job as a TV presenter. The public adored her, the gorgeous girl with olive eyes, tanned skin and beautiful, long blonde hair. She thought that was all she was to them, another pretty face. Her looks were the only thing about her that people liked about her, or at least that's what she thought.

She was used to being treated like an item, all her life. She used to think that her value as a person was purely based on the way she looked. As a teen, everyone treated her like a dumb blond, a Barbie. But she wasn't. Her first boyfriend broke up with her when he found out she wasn't stupid. The one person she thought liked her for who she was only went out with her to use her as eye candy. As a result, she began to act like a bimbo, playing dumb, all just because she thought the only good quality about her were her looks.

That twisted mindset led her to nearly risk her life, believing that people only loved her based on the symmetry of her face, and if she wasn't beautiful, people would stop loving her, and she couldn't deal with that again.

As a child, she drifted from orphanage to orphanage. At one of them she was abused, both physically and mentally. She recalls when it was at its worst, six years into her life. She had made the discovery of scissors, naturally, being fascinated with them, she started cutting things, the buttons off her shirts, her skirt, her bows, then finally her hair. The caregivers were furious; they beat her, threw things at her and called her "ugly", "fat" and "worthless".

She remembers crying alone in her room that night, wondering why they hurt her.

'Why-why did they hurt me?' she asked her dolly, coughing and spluttering as she hugged the plastic doll.

'Do they not love me?' she sobbed, 'Is it because I did a bad thing?' she questioned, looking at her hair in the shards of a mirror they threw at her, then finally looking back at the doll's long blonde hair and skinny body

'Is it because I don't look like you?', she asked her Barbie, whose petite frame she now admired.

That was the night that changed her massively, she still sometimes wonders where she would be now if she hadn't picked up those scissors. For a few months after that, she decided to stop eating after her early discovery of the unrealistic beauty standards of the world. It didn't help that the caregivers praised her when she became 5 kg underweight, they reinforced her theory that to be loved, she had to be pretty. It was only when her primary school teacher noticed how skinny she was, that she got help. What she could remember saying when she was asked why she wasn't eating, was 'I just want to look like my dolly,' pointing at her doll while her teacher broke down in tears.

She was 27 when she found out. She had never felt so alone, even though the world was buzzing around her. When she found out she had cancer, she felt like closing herself off from everyone. She could still remember how tight she was gripping the seat, and the saltiness of her tears dripping down her face as the doctor told her 'Stacey DiMarco, I'm very sorry to inform you that you have been diagnosed with breast cancer'. She didn't leave her house for a week.

After three weeks, she had finally begun to accept her cancer, she would be fine, she told herself. People had recovered from it, what made her any different?

A few months later she was called in for a checkup, that's was when the real tragedy struck. Everything seemed to be going just fine, the doctor was prescribing her some treatment when...

'Oh, Miss DiMarco, I'm sorry but I just discovered some bad news'

'What?' she asked, wondering how it could get any worse

'Unless you start chemotherapy within the next week, you have a 15% chance of surviving,'

'Chemotherapy, as-as in hair loss chemotherapy?' She asked worriedly, the answer could change her decision on getting treatment.

'I'm afraid so,' said the doctor gently, 'Would you like a moment alone?'

She nodded, face expressionless, eyes cold, watching him leave the room.

As soon as he left, she ran to the window and opened it, fingers trembling. Her heart raced as she climbed onto the ledge, looking down at what was to be her fate. She wanted to choose her death, not to have it chosen for her. She sat down, hesitating... was it worth it? She could get the treatment and survive. But that meant losing her hair, what if people called her 'ugly', 'fat' or 'worthless', what if she lost her job. The job that she worked so hard to get and made her feel loved. But why did she need other people to feel loved, she realized. So what if other people didn't love her because she was putting herself first? She sighed and stepped out from the window ...... back into the room.

Looking back on her experience, she knew she made the right choice losing her hair. It turned out the audience loved her, hair or not. Those times were tough but she survived in the end. After all... there were always wigs.