I apologize for the delayed response. I have to thank you all for your kind and supportive words. It means the world. It actually does.
To clarify, my struggles with self-image transcend my baldness. I grew up a misfit, being told I was ugly from an early age, and believing it. Even in high school, long before my hairline started receding around age 17, I remember someone laughing at my head, saying it was shaped like some sort of alien. That comment alone has solidified an image of myself as a freak, still haunting me as I type this. Truth be told, I envy the head shape and bone structure of nearly everyone on this site. I never appreciated myself. I went bald because I straightened my hair so compulsively and obsessively merely because I hated my bushy, curly fine hairs and wanted the slick, thick locks I simply wasn't meant to have. I'd still do just about anything to have that sloppy, frizzy jewfro again.
The problem with baldness, when it starts like it did for so many of us at so young an age, is it robs the idealist of his youth. Not only is he forced to become a version of himself he never anticipated, he must stare into the face of his death. Because I was not expecting to so closely resemble my father at age 20, falling follicles remind us that time is running out.
I shouldn't be surprised I never liked my head shape, but I am learning to be positive about myself in a way that is new and strange to me. I am not sure whether I am finally accepting my unbearable ugliness or waking from a horrible, introspective nightmare, but more often than not, I am learning to like what I see. My hairline reaches back almost as far as my ears, but I've realized that I still have the vast majority of my hair, and am enjoying some fuzz. Learning to live Sly, even if I don't adopt it as a lifestyle, has taught me a great deal about myself. I look at shaving my head (early January of this year) as existential progress, and I'm excited to keep moving forward.
Again, I must thank all of you for building this wonderful community and for making an increasing statistic of balding young mean feel less alone. I plan on being more active on the site now after my lengthy hiatus. I'll attach some more recent pictures in the meantime