note: Please only read this if you like story time
My male pattern baldness started when I was 12 (I had a very early puberty) and I first notice small arches appear on my face. Every subsequent haircut I noticed less hair on my head. It didn’t particularly bother me at the time since my hair was red, I had bad acne and I had bright freckles; you couldn’t really tell what my face looked like. After I turned 12 I avoided most social situations and escaped real life in books, computer games and comfort food. I wasn’t very depressed but I did (still do) have a lot of anxiety.
Sometime after I turned 20 my Grandma said that my skin looked nice and upon closer inspection I agreed. This is going sound shallow but I really wanted to investigate this to the full extent. I started exercising regularly, studying more, eating healthy foods, allowing myself to have friends and go out and finally researching about emotions/ self esteem / mental health issues. The researching was to have a better understanding of people and thus have softer facial expressions that are empathetic toward people; even models look ugly with sneers, smirks and frowns. But I never knew what to do with my hair; quite a few people said to me that I needed to do something with it. I decided try getting it cut very short (lots of people said it looks good on guys with a receding hairline) and that’s when my problem started. When I looked in the mirror, instead of feeling the usual pit in my stomach; I had it in my chest and it was much worse. I’ve never felt the emotion before but I’d say I felt despair; it was like the child inside me died at that point. I hate my hairline; it looks like it belongs on a 40 year old, not me at 21. I don’t know what to do at the moment; I feel like shit; can someone please look at my pictures and honestly say whether I need to change my attitude or get something done about my hairline.