The Battle for Acceptance… My struggle

I originally wrote this in 2015

Being comfortable in one’s skin is probably the most difficult thing one has to achieve in their lifetime. In my opinion could be harder than acquiring any educational qualifying.

From birth, one has to fight for acceptance within their family circles and society. The day you are born people will be secretly or openly trying to find out who you will resemble. There are those who want to see if you have any feature that will tie you to your “father” (tione kuti akafanana nekwakabva pfuma here) or your mother (kwakaenda pfuma). Then you will find those who rush to look at your ears and lips to see if you are going to be a “yellow” or “black” bone. Is she going to have long, thick hair… Is the child going to be brainy or daft? Your struggle for “acceptance” in this world is just starting.

I believe your struggle for acceptance starts while you are a fetus, the fortunate or unfortunate part is that some people will fight on your behalf but with their own intentions. Expectations built by people who fight your “acceptance” battle when you are a minor normally determine or influence what or how you will continue to fight the battle of “acceptance” for the rest of your life.

I have discovered that this battle is mainly fought by the female specie (at least that’s my opinion). I was motivated to look at acceptance after my personal experiences with the struggle for acceptance.

I grew up in a family with as many women as there are men. The women blessed with different body shapes and sizes, different complexions, temperaments, hair textures, fashion sense etc. I was an extremely petite child. Those who grew up with me know what I mean… Lol… Skinny to the extent that until early 2014 I had never weighed more than 49kgs. This means that for the greater part of my adolescent, teenage and adult life I would be exposed to different reactions towards my stature. I always had different non-medical diagnosis, those who think you suffer from a condition that makes you not gain weight, those who will think you do not eat enough to gain weight (Lawd knows I eat more than most sane men in my circles … Lol), those who will feel sorry for you because for a fact “you will really balloon up after giving birth”, and those who were too lazy to come up with any reason why I was skinny and just settle for the fact that I took after my father, and will go as far as indicating that “Dai ndakaitwa mukomana ndiri baba vangu chaivo…i looked like a boy (hililili kwakabva pfuma…LOL)

Because I was super skinny I even earned myself a name in high school… “HB” … Because I had no ownership rights to neither boob nor butt, let alone hip. I was all bone with some covering of flesh, like and “HB Pencil”. Luckily in high school I was mainly worried about what mischief I was going to be upto next, than what boys thought of me, (so my struggle for “acceptance” in the male species’ eye didn’t really exist).

High school was by far the best part of my life because it made me grow a thick skin over my bones… I stopped caring about how skinny I was, and I embraced my nickname and moved on

My Ultimate struggle for acceptance was that of being identified as a woman, by long, thick hair. Maybe if I had been blessed with long, dark flawy hair I wouldn’t have missed circa 7 years worth of optics, I would have had every reason to show off in images…

Ah well!!! I didn’t have long hair either. Not because my mother never bothered to plait my hair or put little pink ribbons on my hair to make it grow… Or because I went to “Group B” schools that believed we all had to cut our hair as part of the uniform… Lol. No, none of the above.

The main reason was that I have always had hair loss issues from when I was a baby (something we laugh about with my mum … Bless her)

So thank God for the “Group B” schools and mission school I went to, I never had to force my hair to grow when it had a mind of its own, and I didn’t feel the need to compete with anyone… We all had bald heads… Lol

Unlike my weight issues which I managed to embrace gracefully, I honestly struggled to embrace the fact that my hair would never grow further than a certain length; or that whenever I comb my hair there will always be a significant amount of hair remaining on the comb. I tried all remedies you can think of to make my hair grow or not fall, but nothing worked… (also because I didn’t know what was causing it)

Being in the professional world didn’t make it any easier because you have a certain look you need to maintain to be “acceptable” as a professional woman… Social acceptance was and is still the worst because everyone has their own idea of what you should look like so that you are “acceptable” in their eyes.

“Oh no please!! A woman should never cut their hair!” “Short hair suits you, but just don’t do it again.” When you finally try to please those who made the comments above… This is what you get… “Ncaaaw tuvhudzi twako zvatunoverengeka.” “Lol, shame, your hair is attempting to grow.”

The list is endless.

For years I tried to fight the battle of acceptance by trying to feed people’s expectations and ideas of who and what I should look like.

In trying to win the battle, I failed to accept myself. It cost me emotionally, and financially. The cost of doing my hair trying to please some people at the cost if my happiness…

Eventually I figured the person who needed to accept me was “myself”. I can never, and will never make everyone happy without making myself happy first.

Last year I decided to go bald, not because I was raising cancer awareness (contrary to what many people decided to think), but because I had reacted to something that accelerated the rate at which I was losing my hair. Incidentally I had patches and the only option was to go bald. The battle for acceptance continued…

I couldn’t walk around with a bald head,”what would people say?”. So I endured the itchiness of a wig for a good week. Because my hair grows at a very slow rate, way much slower than it falls, that meant I was going to have to wear a wig for a good 2 months. It took a night of serious “in front of the mirror” discussions with myself for me to be bold enough to go out bald the next morning.

Boy was I correct about the reactions I was going to get…LOL… I had a lot of mixed comments on that day and the days to come.

Trust me the most painful reactions come from women because you would expect them to try and understand why you did it… Instead all they will do is laugh and probably comment, kindly if you are lucky.

The whole day I never had to hide under the wig and endure the unbearable heat or constant scratching from the itchiness of one… I was happy

Ultimately I figured people will say what they need to say so that you feel accepted, but none really care about how hard it is to accept yourself in your own and their eyes.

My struggle for acceptance made me realize the positives from my negatives.

I embraced the fact that I will probably not weigh more than 55kgs (until I give birth )… But its ok because someone out there is fighting to lose weight so that they get to be what I naturally am.

I can still walk into a clothing store and admire a beautiful piece of clothing on the 13 year old shelf, that I can fit in, and you will tell me how beautiful I look in it. I thank God because I can rock a bald head and still look as beautiful as ever…Its been an amazing journey trying to please people. But the time has come for me to make me happy. I will definitely make or lose friends along the way because of my decision to make me happy, but I will not be apologetic about itI respect every woman out there, because one way or the other we are all fighting the battle of acceptance in society… And its not easy.

I have learnt not to judge that person who is bleaching their skin or the plus size lady I bump into, because believe it or not, they are fighting the battle of acceptance…and we never take time to find out why they are like that.Only thing they haven’t acknowledged is that the power of acceptance is and has always been in their hands.

A couple of weeks ago my hair started falling again… (hence the return of baldilocks ).

Because I have willed to make me happy, I paid my doctor a visit so that we can see what’s been causing this… So good news is I now know what I have always suffered from… For the next month I will be taking meds to see if it can be cured, or suppressed…Having taken you through my journey to acceptance, let me introduce myself.

Hie, my name is Abigail Nyasha Mlingo Matsa I have Alopecia Areata, and I am not ashamed

of it.

#Acceptance_begins_with_me #Love_yourself_first #I_am_not_my_hair #Bold_enough_to_be_bald_and_beautiful