I am so depressed. Depressed is the only word I can think of to describe what I am feeling, the only word that encompasses my sadness, my frustration, my embarrassment, my self-loathing, my helplessness, and my disgust at my self-pity. I know there are millions of people out there who suffer from much worse conditions and diseases, who are undergoing much more traumatic experiences, who live with much less. But this world is still so cruel to those who are physically imperfect, who deviate from the norm.

I have always struggled with being hairy. I started shaving when I was 10 years old, maybe two years too late to avoid social embarrassment but I still remember that there were girls around me who had never picked up a razor in their lives, but thought to comment on my hairy legs. Boys would point out my already thickly forming mustache. I had been mistaken for a boy many times as a child.

My mom really tried to protect me from it. She let me thread my upper lip and took me to get my legs waxed as the regular course of hair removal for an Indian woman. It made no difference – the hair still came back like it was being shaved. I tried depilatories and got chemical burns, but the hair wouldn’t come off. Shaving and waxing led to ingrowns which I would then pick on in frustration, leaving me with many scars all over my legs. And throughout all of this, my period was regular so no doctors have ever picked up on a hormone disorder.

Fourteen years later, I’m 24 and still struggling. I still haven’t figured out the right method of hair removal, but I’m pretty meticulous. I wax my entire body once a month and my underarms every week. I get my face threaded every six weeks and my upper lip every week. I plucked the hair off my chin because they seem to grow darker and faster. For the last couple of months, every time I went to the salon, I came back nicked on my face from the thread, and burned and bruised with portions of my skin coming off with the wax. Furthermore, the ingrowns seemed to be getting worse. Besides just the hair growing underneath my skin, the pore would often become red and swollen and the skin around the area darker and discolored. The discoloration wouldn’t go even after the hair was released. I was at my wit’s end. A family friend suggested laser hair removal (not electrolysis because I just had too much hair). I began reading up on it again for the third time in three years.

I had often considered more permanent forms of hair removal but after reading that electrolysis only removes 30% of the hair after a year and that laser often leaves people with scars (the managing director at Citigroup is one famous case), I would shrug my shoulders and go back to my usual hair removal methods. This time, however, I’ve reached a point where I don’t care if the laser scars. If it just removes the hair, if it just makes it grow less or lighter… ANYTHING will make a difference.

I researched a couple of places in my area and visited them. Some of them were pretty scary (if a place talks to you about how the flesh will burn in the first 5 minutes of your , conversation, or that their technicians haven’t finished receiving all their certifications… well that’s definitely a turn-off, not matter how much any of their clients recommends the place). At one place, the technician herself had blotchy, chemical burn looking skin and I definitely drove out of there as fast as I could. I finally settled on a place after month.

It’s now been two full months since I last threaded, plucked or waxed. In those two months, I began by not touching the hair for awhile. It was excruciatingly embarrassing. I’m in a new city, taking classes at the local university. I have a handful of friends here, none of whom I have seen because I just… I just don’t want to see them. I know that friends will accept you the way that you are… and they have. They’ve seen me at my worst, in baggy sweats, hair up, no make-up, whatnot… and that I can deal with. But memories of my childhood, being taunted for the hair, is too much to even bear the thought that I might be teased again. And lets face it, we never talk about that kind of embarrassment, not to anyone.

Besides not seeing them, I don’t speak to anyone in my classes, afraid they are judging me. I know I did whenever I saw a hairy girl… I always thought that here I am going through so much pain to conceal it, why doesn’t she? It’s made the past few months very isolating.

After finally making an appointment at a laser hair removal place (and ladies, they are usually pretty busy so book it early), the cosmetologist told me I could shave the areas, but to make sure I didn’t remove any hairs from the roots. So I shave my legs and underarms once a week, trim my bikini area every two weeks, and shave my face… every day. With my face, it’s mostly the chin that bothers me. I can go days with touching my mustache – it really has gotten lighter over the 14 years of threading, or I’ve just gotten used to seeing hair there. But as time progressed and my hair growth all synced up, I was able to see how much hair I really had on my chin. And it’s devastating and embarrassing. I don’t leave the house on the days I don’t shave. I try to only shave once in the morning, and try to be home within 6-7 hours after that. It reminds me of the show, Ugly Duckling, where the women were depressed because they were obese and hairy.

I’ll post pics so you can see the before and after shots. This is what it looks like today, after three days of not shaving (it’s Sunday, and I shaved Thursday morning). I haven’t left the house since… hopefully, tomorrow will be different.