Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 26, 2019

Sometimes I feel personally victimised by my own brain.

The other day I used bleach to clean some not-at-all-white-anymore whites I had piled up. I was hoping to use the power of chemicals to blast away my careless laundry mistakes, wine stains and general grubbiness.

I have very little experience with bleach, as mine was not a bleach-using household. I mean, it’s not like we used lemon halves to clean every surface or cleansed the house with a smudge stick instead a spray-and-wipe, but we generally try to avoid harsh chemicals. And so bleach was never really a thing in our house. Even when I was bitten on the face by my dog (I totally forgot about that whole saga until the other day) and soaked a white and yellow tea towel with my blood, the more natural soak-it-in-cold-water trick eliminated the need for bleach.

So I’m not used to its power and potency.

I remember the first time I used bleach to clean my bathroom as a 26-year-old, I was absolutely amazed by the way it erased months of neglect and cleared out the concerning density of mould metropolises in the grout between the tiles. Some of my euphoria probably came from the fumes I inhaled, but the sentiment was in no way chemically enhanced. That was a powerful clean.

Anyway, I decided to use this magic potion/extremely dangerous chemical to make my whites white again. I poured some bleach into a bucket, added water and squished my clothes around in the colour-zapping liquid with my bare hands and went upstairs to have a shower while the clothes soaked.

I washed my hands with soap before hopping into the shower, but as I was lathering my hair with shampoo, the thought struck me that it would be very, very unfortunate if I still had some bleach on my mitts and was unknowingly coating my locks with it.

Panic set in.

I pictured my dark-but-also-somehow-kinda-reddish brown hair dotted with cat-wee-coloured splodges. Thick, Carmello streaks. 2002-Paris-Hilton-blonde regrowth dripping into brown hair.

It wasn’t a nice picture.

Tried to comfort myself by lying that I could be super laid back about it and just roll with it, even though that kind of response woluld be physically impossible for me. I told myself I could just dye over the bleach. Perhaps I could become more of a cap wearer. Maybe I’d become someone who rocks bold headscarves.

But just in case (a highly-likely case, mind you) I couldn’t actually be someone who just says “oh well” and moves on with life, I took evasive action. I finished washing my hair using just my nails, scratching the shampoo in rather than pressing my potentially-chemical-laced fingertips into my scalp. I then rinsed very, very, very thoroughly. I hopped out of the shower, tied my hair back and tried to get on with my day.

I knew that, given the fact I washed my hands before touching my hair, the likelihood of an accidental dye job was low. But my brain didn’t want me to believe that.

Instead, it attuned me to the sensations in my general head region. I mean, I assume this is some kind of danger sensing response, hard-wired into my brain as a result of thousands of years of evolution that helped my cave-dwelling ancestors overcome threats. But in a modern setting it has manifested into something that is really not helpful.

I’d convinced myself that I felt burning on my scalp. This, something told me, had nothing to do with the fact that I scratched my head skin raw while shampooing and everything to do with chemical burns. The totally normal amount of hair that came out in my fingers while showering was essentially half the hair on my head, broken off after the bleach burned through the roots. And that dizziness I was feeling had nothing to do with the fact that the only liquid I’d consumed by 2pm that day (it was my day off and I’d had a cheeky sleep-in) was two cups of tea; it was the bleach, which I pictured eroding my actual brain, having seeped in through my hair, skin and even my skull.

Eventually, I forced myself to look in the mirror, examining my roots for yellow blotches. There were none to be found. There was nothing to worry about. Everything was fine.

Of course, after obsessing about this for a good hunk of the day, I fully expect to experience many absurd hair-related dreams as my brain organises the day’s events in my sleep.