At 54, I'd been finding a few wiry strands at my temples for about a year. Nothing major at first. Just a couple of stubborn hairs that wouldn't lie flat.

The kind of thing you smooth down with a little water and forget about...

But it didn't stay that way.

The halo frizz crept up on me.

Like a thief in the night, stealing little pieces of my life one by one.

First it was the pool.

I had to quit swimming with my grandkids because the chlorine was eating through every strand, turning my hair into straw.

Then it was the mirror.

The one in my hallway became my enemy.

I started walking past it without looking, like I was rearranging my whole life around this invisible prison.

Then it was Greg.

He used to run his fingers through my hair every night. But one night while we were on the couch, he compared my hair to a Brillo pad.

Not exaggerating.

He didn't mean it cruelly. He laughed it off, kissed my forehead, told me he was only teasing. 

But he stopped reaching for my hair after that night.

Eventually I stopped waiting for him to. Started sitting a little further away myself.

That became our "normal" for the next year.

A year of him keeping his hands to himself. A year of us on opposite ends of our own couch. A year of feeling like strangers in our own home.

And that moment when I couldn't even tame my own hair? That was rock bottom.

I was standing in my bathroom, watching every strand spring back up the second I let go, tears running down my face, trying to do something every woman does without thinking...

And I couldn't do it.

Greg came in and just held me, the way you'd hold a child who'd skinned her knee.

I sat on the edge of the tub afterward and just sobbed.

Not from the frustration. From the humiliation.

From the realization that this thing had taken everything from me.

My independence. My afternoons at the pool. My reflection. Greg's hands in my hair. My identity.

I didn't know who I was anymore.

And I had no idea that in just a few weeks, everything was about to change...