How Getting Gray Hair At The Age Of 25 Has Shaken Up My Yellow World
I usually don’t initiate a discussion. Especially when I think it will be an unpopular opinion. Mostly I try to avoid having conflicts. Disagreement can scare me.
I would say I am a people pleaser. Sometimes, I want for people to like me, maybe even to love me. All of them. And if they don’t, I question their sanity. That being said, I am someone who strives to be polite, friendly, warm, positive, and considers putting effort to look my best. These are all characteristics of myself that I’m quite familiar with. My philosophy used to be “Anything not too loud and not too controversial will do.”
That was until there was an event in my life that made me look at the world different.
It all started with finding one gray hair at the age of 25: My intention with this article is not to share just another success story of how I’ve overcome one of my deepest insecurities, I instead want to share my thoughts as I’m in the midst of it, feeling strong one day and balling my eyes out the other. I hope to unpack in this piece how it’s affected me, how I have been influenced my culture and media and what I am learning from it.
I felt very lonely at the beginning of this journey, I still sometimes feel this way. Therefore it’s crucially important for me to break the gray-hair stigma and start a discourse about it and show others that they are not alone.
How it all started
Shock. Conscious effort to ignore. Confusion. Excuses. Anything that would shift my mind from the fact I saw 3 gray hairs on top of my head back in March 2020. Would I have known I would see a reflection of myself now every morning with more and more gray hair I can’t possibly spray over fully, I probably wouldn’t have been so hard on myself.
Gray hair. It’s a topic I’ve been challenged with for over 8 months now. As you already know, I’m 25 years old and my hair is turning into gray faster than I thought it would. Before March 2020, I was sure I wouldn’t get gray hair before I turn at least 50 years old because…, my mom is 49 and she still doesn’t have a single grey hair. So I wasn’t worried at all. AT ALL.
The next thing I know — I wash my hair, brush it out and see something light in my hazelnut brown hair — a few gray hairs! Are you kidding me? No way! It must be my diet. Let’s do more sports and eat more greens. Let’s google what to do to reverse grays into my natural hazelnut brown color again. Right.. That didn’t exactly work as expected. But I tried my best to do anything the media was telling me to do to stop this process of graying.
But I tried my best to do anything the media was telling me to do to stop this process of graying.
Funny enough, preventions, home remedies, aimless explanations about what caused my hair to start turning gray didn’t really help. I was trying to find comfort, I was meaning to connect with people who would be going through similar experiences, advise me on how to deal with it, and quite frankly, face the harsh reality. Most importantly, mentally. I wasn’t ready and I’m sure no one was. I had no idea who to talk to and, obviously, fully relied on whatever online magazines would tell me. Basically, if you have gray hair on your head, you’re stressed and here are some pills for you. They’ll solve the issue. Or, better, change your lifestyle. Stop smoking, stop drinking, invest some time into your morning and evening routine, drink celery juice and you’ll reverse your gray hair to your natural color overnight. That inevitably led me to the feeling of loneliness, anxiety basically became my best friend. I started thinking something is really wrong with me, I got paranoid that I was dying.
It’s a journey I can’t escape from and am happy to embark on it
Unapologetically gray hair has become a part of me, it has joined my life without being asked to. Gray hair was brave enough to come to my life and shake up my self-esteem; the perception I had of myself; my understanding of youth; as if it wasn’t enough, it even made me face my biggest fears. Death, for example.
Death wasn’t a topic I would see, hear or talk often, to say the least. Living in a big city that is full of life, energy, chaos, I don’t have space for death, I need to live fast. And I need to make sure I use all the opportunities that come my way.
Death wasn’t a topic I would see, hear or talk often, to say the least. Living in a big city that is full of life, energy, chaos, I don’t have space for death, I need to live fast. And I need to make sure I use all the opportunities that come my way. Therefore it’s no surprise that me seeing myself age visually in the midst of my youth really hit me home. Up until that moment, the first thing people would say about me after commenting on my height (surprise: some people are taller than the average), would be my age. I was used to always being the youngest person anywhere I would go to, consequently my youth and my identity were merged together. As they were integrated into each other, they needed to be separated at some point, too. I chose not to have my identity be defined by my age, by my youth, by any of this. It was too risky and naive to think I could put an equality sign between my visual appearance and my self-worth. I had to learn it the hard way — nothing is permanent. Not my body, not my skin, not my hair colour. My identity is and will be defined by my beliefs, my actions and my values.
Today, my hair is not getting more hazelnut, instead they’re turning into cashews. All nuts are great but cashews now are my least favorite. Did I think I would face this problem before turning 25 years old? Absolutely not. Did I think I would be sitting in front of my boyfriend, crying and telling him that I don’t want to die at the age of 25? Most definitely not. However, that all happened. And it didn’t feel great but the premature aging aspect made me sit down and think; think deeply about who I am without my naturally brown hair, who I am without external validation of my looks and what I actually want to do regardless of my looks. I realized the fragility of the time we all have on this earth. That led me to more courageous decisions, aspirations in life and the desire to live every single day. Every single day.
Ageing is just another evidence of us being alive.
Ageing is just another evidence of us being alive.
I’m sharing this story so that other people facing this problem wouldn’t think they’re alone in this. Premature grey hair is still a big taboo in our forever-young-and-beautiful society and as I couldn’t find anyone to talk to about this, I hope you find my story helpful. You’re not alone.
Ieva Luskeviciute