When I was in my early-to-mid 20s, I had a stable job with people I liked, good friends, a nice and brilliant boyfriend, lived in a shithole apartment and loved it, and had a disposable income. I also had a habit of drastically changing my hair on a whim. I’d cut it, color it, do anything just to make it a little different.
It doesn’t take Anna OR Sigmund to figure out that while I had what I was supposed to want, I lacked control, direction, and a clean place to cook a meal. Coloring and cutting my hair appear to be two ways of asserting control over my life, and trying to figure out (in an abstract way, admittedly) who the fuck I was.
My favorite color to have my hair was purple. It was a darkish purple, and looked surprisingly natural. It was when I stripped my hair, or, as a darling little girl I knew at the time called it, “oranged” my hair, that it turned to matted and unmanageable straw. I’d have to wear a hat for a couple months until I could run a brush through it, and then have a professional come in and fix it for me. Often, they would have to add layers and layers of color just to give my hair a little bit of volume. I lost a LOT of hair in those years.
These days, I’m home most of the time, and am not working, no boyfriend, not too many friends (I’ve pretty much told everyone I know to piss off except a few), not too much going on upstairs, and the physical inability to do much to change any of it. My mind and body are still reeling from some pretty fucking severe trauma, and I’m not altogether happy. In fact, some people would say that I’m a raving, cynical, bitter lunatic these days, and I wouldn’t entirely disagree with them.
Know what makes me happy? The fact that I have a jar of purple hair color in my bathroom. It’s been sitting there for the past few months. I ordered it from eBay during one of my little nighttime blackouts. Every time I go into the bathroom, I look at it and smile, thinking that one of these days, I’m going to purple my hair again.
It’s great to have purple hair. You know how you sometimes catch a surprise glimpse of yourself in a mirror? Imagine catching a surprise glimpse of yourself in the mirror AND YOU HAD PURPLE HAIR! Wouldn’t you feel like a cartoon? And wouldn’t that make things a little more interesting?
One of these days, I will purple my hair again, only this time, I’ll be covering mostly healthy, and pretty severely gray hair. But honestly, if you were me, wouldn’t you?
[photos to come-I have to scan them in, and am too lazy to do so right now. Shut up, motherfucker, I'm on ALL the drugs you can't get your filthy little hands on!]
