Christyn Refuerzo: Braiding Hair

Christyn Refuerzo struggled to tell her story, until she discovered the secret ingredient.

I took a step outside, the chill of late December against my bare head for the first time.

I was eighteen, my hair fully gone for nearly five years. My mom was in the house, too sick to do much else. I resolved that year to start going out without a wig because I needed her to get better more than covering my shame of not having hair.

I lost my hair to alopecia areata at thirteen. My immune system ate at my hair follicles, and it kept doing so until it all fell out.

My hair loss became part of me the moment the first strand fell.

Even before the loss, I knew that writing was part of how I explored truth.

So at sixteen, I tried to write the alopecia story: in an online writer’s workshop. For three weeks, I drafted and revised. I hated it. In the end, I sent a draft to my instructor who said it wasn’t ready. It had to walk. So I let it go.

At nineteen, I wrote about alopecia, about two sisters – one who had lost her beloved hair and the other, my narrator, who believes her queerness to be less important than her sister’s alopecia. I called it “Braiding Hair.”

And even though it was fiction, I knew that I had done it. I had written the alopecia story.

Because even though “Braiding Hair” might not have been my experience, as I am both sisters – it was my truth.

I realized that’s what it was about all along. It was about my truth, no matter what form it was in. Because it was mine.

With a Perspective, I’m Christyn Refuerzo.

Christyn Refuerzo is a writing and literature student based in New York from Union City. While capable of nonfiction, her heart is in fiction. Outside of her wordy life, she enjoys being with family and friends and drinking coffee.