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I skipped my 40-year matric reunion because I was afraid to stand next to my best friend. I'm 57 years old. Elmarie and I have been friends since we were 14. Forty-three years. She was my maid of honour. I was hers. We raised our kids three streets apart in Hilton. When my mother died, she slept on my couch for a week. And I couldn't stand next to her. The invitation came in March. Elmarie sent me a photo that same night. Our matric dance. "We're going right??" I looked at that photo for a long time. I looked at that girl. Seventeen. Fearless. Took up space like she deserved it. Walked into every room like she owned it. I don't know her anymore. I typed "Absolutely, can't wait." Deleted it. Typed "Wouldn't miss it for the world." Deleted it. Typed "Let me check with Dawie and get back to you." Sent that. I never got back to her. The week before the reunion, Elmarie phoned. "So what are you wearing? I'm thinking that green dress, remember the one from" "I can't go." Silence. "What do you mean you can't go?" "I just… something came up. Dawie's work thing. I can't." More silence. "You're lying to me." I didn't say anything. "We've been planning this for six months. You've had it on your calendar since January. What's going on?" I should've told her. Forty-three years. She would've understood. Instead I said: "I'm just not feeling well. I think I'm coming down with something." She said okay. She said she hoped I felt better. She said she'd take photos. I put the phone down and sat in my kitchen and felt like the worst friend alive. The night of the reunion I opened a bottle of wine and watched it happen on Facebook. There was Elmarie in the green dress. There was Sanet who I hadn't seen in twenty years. There was Ronel and Marietjie and that girl whose name I can never remember, the one who dated the first-team flyhalf. They looked happy. They looked like themselves. Older. Some heavier. Some greyer. But themselves. They showed up. They stood under the lights. They got in the photos. And I was sitting on my couch in my pyjamas, alone, hiding from people who love me. I finished the bottle. I went to bed at half past eight. I told myself it was fine. I told myself I'd see them another time. I told myself it didn't matter. I woke up at 3am and couldn't stop crying. Here's what I didn't tell Elmarie. Here's what I haven't told anyone. The reason I couldn't stand next to her has nothing to do with Dawie's work. Nothing to do with feeling sick. It's because Elmarie still looks like Elmarie. Same age as me. And she still walks into a room like she owns it. Still throws her hair up without thinking about it. Still takes photos from any angle, in any light, without flinching. And I've become someone who checks every mirror. Who sits with her back to the wall. Who hasn't been in a photo in two years. I've become someone who cancels plans based on the lighting. I know the lighting in every room I walk into. I could tell you which shops are safe and which ones aren't. The Woolies in Hilton is fine. The Spar is a disaster. It started maybe three years ago. I was getting ready for my nephew's wedding. Curling tong in hand, bathroom mirror, just like I'd done a thousand times. And I saw it. My scalp. Right at the crown. Pink. Visible. Like someone had erased part of me. I stood there with the tong in my hand until it went cold. I told myself it was the lighting. Bad globe. Weird angle. But then I saw it again. And again. In the rearview mirror. In the fitting room at Woolworths. In the photo my daughter took at Easter. The one where I'm turned slightly and you can see right through to skin. I deleted that photo. I asked her to delete it too. I said my eyes were closed. My eyes weren't closed. I stopped doing things. Stopped wearing my hair up. Stopped swimming. Told Dawie the chlorine bothered my skin. Stopped sitting in the front at church. Stopped standing outside on the paving afterwards, where everybody talks. Stopped going to Ronel's book club. Those downlights in her lounge made me want to disappear. Stopped getting in photos. "I'll take it, you guys get in there." "The angle's bad on this side." "Go ahead, I'll get the next one." It's not like I didn't try to fix it. I bought the biotin. Two different kinds. The gummies that taste like sweets and promise you the world. A R400 shampoo because the bottle said "thickening" and I wanted to believe it. Castor oil. Six weeks of sleeping on an old towel so I wouldn't ruin the pillowcases. A collagen powder I stirred into my coffee every morning until I couldn't drink coffee anymore. The salon system. Shampoo, conditioner, the leave-in, the little bottle of drops. Cost more than a month's petrol. There's a little tinted powder you shake onto your scalp to hide the pink. I had that too. Kept it in my handbag like other women keep lipstick. None of it did a thing. Except leave me with a bathroom drawer full of bottles and the same scalp staring back at me. So I figured that was just it. That was just how this was going to go now. I have three thousand photos of my granddaughter. She's four. I've documented every moment of her life. I'm not in a single one. She won't know what I looked like. There's one of her blowing out four candles. My hand is in the corner of the frame, holding the plate. That's all of me there is. My daughter asked me last Christmas why I'm never in photos anymore. I said my arms were too short for selfies. She laughed. I laughed. I went to the bathroom and cried so hard I had to run the tap so no one would hear. A week after the reunion, my sister Hester phoned. We talk every Sunday. She knows me. She could hear it. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." "You're lying. What's going on?" I don't know why I told her. Maybe because she's 62 and she's been through everything first. Maybe because I was tired of carrying it alone. I told her about the reunion. About Elmarie. About the photos and the hair-up and the bathroom at Christmas. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: "Why didn't you say something? I went through the exact same thing." Apparently this happens. After menopause, something changes. Not just the hot flushes and the sleepless nights. Something else. Something no one warns you about. Hester said everyone she'd asked had been useless too. Same thing they told me. Just your age. Some women thin out. Nothing wrong with you, apparently. Off you go. But she told me it isn't just age. She said after menopause your body stops making as much of the thing that used to keep your hair protected. And once that protection drops, there's a hormone — DHT — that just goes to work on the follicles. Quietly. For years. Shrinking them down until they stop bothering. "That's why the shampoos never do anything," she said. "They're fussing with the outside. The whole problem's on the inside." "It's two things at once," she said. "You have to go after that hormone. And you have to give the hair the stuff it's actually built from. One without the other is money down the drain." I didn't follow all of it. I just knew she wasn't thinning anymore. And I was. I'd actually noticed she looked different. Better. I figured she'd had something done. I never asked. "It's called Cowgirls," she said. "One capsule a day. Saw palmetto to target the hormone, biotin for the hair itself. Give it three months. Trust me." I'd heard "just try this" a hundred times by then. But she'd been right about everything else my whole life. And I was tired of that drawer. So I ordered it. Week one, nothing. Except less hair in my brush. Not dramatically less. Nobody would have noticed but me. But I'd been reading that brush like tea leaves for three years. Week two, less in the shower. Less on my pillow. Less everywhere. My nails went first. Growing so fast I was cutting them one Sunday and again the next. Week four, baby hairs. Along my hairline. Standing straight up, refusing to lie down. My forehead touched the mirror. Week eight it looked fuller. Not fixed. Fuller. Four months in, my part was narrower. And when I put my hair up again — my own kitchen, nobody watching — the ponytail felt thicker in my hand. Then Marlene put her hands on my shoulders at the basin and said: "I don't know what you're doing, but don't stop." She's been cutting my hair for twelve years. Never once mentioned the thinning. Last month, my niece's 21st. They lined everyone up for photos. Whole family. Under the lights on the stoep. I didn't move to the end. I didn't angle my body. I didn't say "I'll take it." I stood in the middle. I got in the photo. I phoned Elmarie that night. "I need to tell you something." I told her everything. The real reason I missed the reunion. The years of hiding. The bathroom at Christmas. She cried. I cried. "You should've told me," she said. "I would've come over and we could've watched the Facebook photos together and made fun of everyone's faces." I laughed. First real laugh in a long time. "Next reunion," I said. "I'll be there. Front row. Any lighting." "Promise?" "Promise." I'm not writing this because everything's fixed. My hair isn't what it was at seventeen. It never will be. And it doesn't go the same for everyone. Individual results may vary from person to person. I'm writing this because I'm not hiding anymore. I'm back at book club. I'm back in the photos. I'm in the fifth row at church now. Not the third yet, but forward instead of backward. This December we're going down to Ballito and I'm getting in the sea. And I don't know where you are right now. Maybe you're the one who takes every photo and is never in a single one. Maybe there's an invitation on your fridge and you already know you're going to find a reason. Maybe you've got your own drawer full of bottles that didn't do anything. I just need you to know it doesn't have to keep going the way it's been going. Picture the next family photo. The one where you don't drift to the end of the line. Picture saying yes to the sea. To the front row. To the reunion. Picture someone holding up a phone, and you not flinching. If you're over 55 and you've been making yourself smaller. Skipping things. Hiding from cameras. Lying to the people who love you most. It's not vanity. It's your life. And you're allowed to want it back. Cowgirls is linked below. 50% off with free shipping, and 90 days to change your mind. Give it the three months. Then go stand in the middle of the photo.