The Hire. The Hair. The Closer to God.

On the second floor of the psychiatric hospital amid rolling hills in what New York City dwellers consider to be the precipice of “upstate,” is the eating disorder unit. We patients were far and few between. The adult unit had, at most, about eight people at one time. Some had dual diagnoses, and in fact, most, including myself I would later find out, had some other psychiatric issue that pushed us to restrict food intake to ascetic-levels so that our bodies were skeletal mannequins – an inanimate object that model, activist, and most recently a NYT bestselling author, Emily Ratajkowski, identifies as when disassociating. When a mannequin, she is but a body used to meet and end, as described in My Body. Our skin was a map of blood vessels. Our temples visibly throbbed at all times, indicating our heart was somehow still pumping in spite of our orthostatic drops in pulse and blood pressure. There was one such patient who epitomized this collective description, except she had a trait that surpassed even my own: a head of thick hair.

Malnourishment and the body’s mechanism of protecting itself amidst famine include foregoing any superfluous bodily functions – like reproduction and hair growth. Somewhat contradictory, as the body reroutes blood going to hair follicular cells to help protect organs, the body also develops light tufts of facial and body hair, known as lanugo, in an effort to provide warmth from no longer insulated bodies. When in the throes of the physical repercussions of anorexia, a low body mass index, hair tends to fall. Contradictory, once more, is that the hair continues to fall while the body is gaining weight and recovering because new hair growth pushes out the deadened vestiges of hair’s past.

This young Frenchwoman, my peer, could have been mistaken for myself only a few weeks ago with a light olive tinted skin wrapped tightly around chiseled cheek bones and a jutted jawline. She, however, had thick auburn highlighted brunette hair that was loosely wound around itself, squarely on the crown of her head, like the pom on a Scottish tam, or more aptly, the pointy stub on a French beret. The hair on top of her head was like a conical birthday hat, ironically so, because she seemed so close to death. The higher her hair, the closer she seemed to be to God, like fasting ascetics who hallucinate, sometimes high on hunger, and sometimes on other natural forces.

She would remain on the balls of her feet, standing for more than the thirty second-allotted time that we were permitted to stand. One couldn’t say she paced the windowless hallway that we were cordoned off to either. She took evenly steadied strides, as if wading on a body of water that would suddenly emerge from her eye sockets as she burst into tears, trembling in fear, as if she saw a ghost, like looking into the mirror. Anyone would think she was crazy, but instead, she was catatonic, heavily medicated on antipsychotics to manage her eating disorder.

After years of participating in compulsory activity and behaviors that further strengthened my eating disorder, I accepted medication. At the beginning, I found myself staring straight ahead, standing so that the blood in my feet collected to the extent of making me feel as if I were floating rather than rooted. It still happens, sometimes. I mentioned this to my care providers who denied this phenomenon as a symptom. My dosage was so low that it was simply a means to control my rituals and behaviors associated with reduced cognition and unhealthy low body weight. I was not catatonic, as others had deemed I would become. These “others” stigmatized medication from the outset. These “others” are my closest kin.

Instead of being a mannequin - I was not disassociating- I was projecting vitality, sending ripples of animate quality into the space around me. I took up space. Standing and staring: I was focusing so acutely and keenly on my inner thoughts that it shook me. I was so shook that my hair, tied up in a high bun atop my head, precariously seesawed in tandem. Once grown out long, and now chopped up in layers going longitudinally and latidunal, my hair is wound up in a loose bun a majority of the time. My tresses sometimes escape, framing my face in loose curlicues.  

I stand and it sears deeply that I am not financially independent, vulnerable to abuses from the silent treatment given by talent acquisition to the constant barrage of insults hurled in my direction. Lucky for me, standing, seesawing, shaken, I dodge the profanity, but they still brush by me. So that even when my hair falls from God’s good graces, it remains untangled, as it were, otherwise wound up in a silky submission. 

If I were hired, perhaps I would regain my faith, and be closer to God. Perhaps my hair on the crown of my head brings me closer to God. According to The Atlantic, “women in particular have been told for centuries that their hair is their glory, which paraphrases a biblical edict, about long hair as a demonstration of righteousness before God. A full head of hair, Donovan, the Whistler dermatologist, pointed out, is still a crude, unscientific shorthand for youth, for healthy living, for vitality.” Perhaps that young Frenchwomen and I kept our hair in a high topknot as a subconscious way of finding our footing on a path designated by some other unworldly being. It was supernatural, staying erect despite gravity’s pull. Our hair, vertically furled, was our power. 

It takes power to not hide behind a sheet of hair. It takes power to try and be hired despite the outcome being out of your control. Human resource management is gravity and I, the applicant trying to be hired, trying to move higher, falls prey. The higher I reach, the closer I am to godly independence, away from abusers, away from the confines of my past habits. I would argue that past behaviors is no indicator of future habits. Wise people may call this logic a sucker’s maxim, but that’s just it. Wise people are mortals; they aren’t divine powers beyond our understanding. The higher the hair, the closer to God and to be hired brings me closer to godliness as well.  

Sure, being hired bears money and money inherently has value. Value is valued. Financial independence is seen as antithetical to laziness. To be hired means having purpose that is endowed by a schedule. Time is fleeting, and anything fleeting or temporary, is valuable. Its not a matter of worshiping work, instead, it is a matter of proximity to that which is worshiped. Hired, you’re worshiped in some form. You are a human resource. You’re more human than ever when hired. Even so, you’re closer to God for it.