Day Six - The stuff we carry never gets lighter...

Dirty mirrors and work clothes. 

By 2002, Kitten was four and I found myself in the midst of a re-kindling.  After two years of only telephone and email contact, Wolf and I had a face-to-face visit.  It lasted ten days, out here on the Island, and resulted in Kitten and my relocation to Ontario to create our new family.  Why Ontario?  Well, Wolf was the sole proprietor of a thriving company which wouldn't have taken well to uprooting.  

 ... yes, this does have something to do with hair and my issues therewith...

My bleach phase was on hiatus and I hadn't done anything more than remove the remaining white tips from my hair.  Ontario weather is brilliant!  I grew up in arid Alberta and, therefore, didn't know my hair was curly.  The constant Hamilton humidity meant twelve hours of air-drying time after I washed my hair.  I finally had a wash-n-go 'do!

So, the very air was my friend, and my hair was growing ridiculously fast.  My life was fresh and new.  I was ready to start playing again.  There was only one problem.  Wolf was the sole proprietor of a thriving company in Hamilton, Ontario - I was 'Dharma' to Wolf's 'Greg,' but with less self worth and more guilt and a martyr complex that beat all.  I was bound to the rules of upper-middle class society.  No visible piercings.  No funky colours.  Buy yourself a nice dress...

And then, two years had passed.  My hair was mid-back length and shapeless.  Wolf was afraid to let me cut it, so I let myself get talked in to a 'complimentary birthday haircut' by our stylist friend.  Oops.  I asked for long layers, she layered it.  I walked out with diamond head.  You know, where the fullest part of the hair is at the jaw line and it tapers both up and down from there?  Well, I stuck with that cut for about two weeks (see a pattern here?) before I grabbed the scissors.  Wolf said he'd feel better if he cut it, as he could see the back of my head.  So, he cut it.  That one didn't even last 48 hours before I fixed it.

Two years later I cut off several inches in an attempt to clear up my split ends.  I swore I'd start trimming in every couple of months, but it was already too late.  The obsession was growing without my realizing.  While I was busy being resentful, I neglected to see the strengthening correlation between my okay-ness and my hair.  And my hair got longer.  Two more years later and I had six inches removed.  It was back to an inch above my bra strap.  And my hair got longer...

I'm standing at the crossroads, nine years from my last play-with-my-hair day.  My locks are long enough that they get caught under my leg when I get into the truck.  They are badly damaged from years of sweater collars and it takes me almost an hour to get shampoo and conditioner through and then rinsed out of them.  It's like having a baby.  Everything has become difficult: sleeping, showering, cleaning, working... it's always in the way.  Even if I put it up...  It takes way too much energy, and it isn't energy I want to spend.

Are you asking how it got to this point?  Why I didn't cut it sooner, if it was bugging me so much?  Because it's long.  It's really, really long.  In a world where long hair is defined as 'below the shoulders,' it has become more than novelty.  It's a defining characteristic.  A part of me points out how pathetic that is.  I'm a great person.  I'm kind and likable.  None of those things is effected by the length of my hair.  My value or 'specialness' isn't decreased because I don't have long, unhealthy, resented hair.

Besides, it's not like it won't grow back...

Day Five - Carry-on Luggage

Braided.

Baggage.  I think it's safe to say that we all have it, in one way or another.  I like trying to 'checking' it, banishing it to the cavernous depths of my metaphorical plane, hoping that the airline will lose it.  Sometimes I shove it into the overhead compartment, out of sight but still looming over me.  And no matter how hard I work on 'dealing' with it, the Universe is always more than willing to remind me that it's still here, tethered and weighing me down. Anchoring me in garbage.

The interesting thing is, all of my bags match.  They don't all hold the same thing - that would be silly - but each holds something undeniably related and tied in to the others.  It doesn't matter what the issue-of-the-day may be, somehow it will trigger 98.669% of all the other crap in my head.

Since 2002.

I have letting go issues and a self-worth disability, anxiety disorder and a sprinkle of debilitating depression.  And they're all tied together feeding on and being fed off of each other.  I was under the impression that the passage of time would lead to maturity, which would bring wisdom and, eventually, peace.  You know what the passage  of time leads to?  More birthdays,  which leads to older-than-ever-ness and, inevitability, wrinkles.  Not overly comforting.

I used to have a hair fixation when I was younger.  I bleached and dyed and refused to trim because I needed every battered inch that I could get.  And I couldn't leave the house without styling it.  You know how some women can fix a bad hair day with an elastic and a ball cap?  I wasn't one of those.  If my hair was shite, I was shite.

When Kitten was born, my hair was three or four inches past  my shoulders.  Life with a new baby doesn't leave a whole lot of time to play with one's hair, so for the first year of Kitten's life, my hair lived in a pony tail and grew.  Close to her first birthday, I was sitting in the kitchen of the house I shared with my mom.  My sister was visiting and she was playing with my long, straw-like - in both colour and texture - pony tail.  I love having my hair played with so I removed the elastic and revelled in the attention.  Eventually, though, her intention cut through my pleasure.  She was cringing.  I couldn't see her, but it was strong enough to be felt, none the less.  This set me to thinking about how gross my hair looked, truly.  With the remnants of a bad blond job* taking up about half the length of my hair, I knew cutting it was the only remedy.  I had tried dying darker - twice at home and once in a salon - only to have the colour wash out.  Apparently my hair was too porous.  Something to do with the size of the dye molecules....   "Hurry up, before I change my mind."  I was that unspecific and my sister was running for scissors.

She cut my hair to my shoulders which is my least favourite style in the world.*   A few weeks later, while visiting family in Calgary, I had it cut Sarah McLachlan c.1998.  Having curly hair made this a very disappointing style and a few weeks after returning from our visit, I enlisted a friend and we took the clippers to my head.  I loved it and kept it that was for several months.  Right up until I noticed the side effects.  I didn't mind the flirty smiles from the ladies, but the threatening smiles from some of the men made me a little nervous.  And I hated when senior citizens thought I was something to fear.

The great thing about those months was that my fixation was broken.  My hair became something that I could play with.  I bleached, properly this time, and spent a while 'looking like sunshine,' according to Kitten.  I was reinventing myself and I loved it.

 ...to be continued...

*(note the natural colour of my hair... I used a box of blond dye, twice, two weeks apart, in order to get a lovely orange colour)

*as it was the style my mother had throughout my childhood.  Show me a kid who grew up in a dysfunctional family who want to look like her mother and I'll.... I don't know.

Day Four - Long weekend...

Tomorrow I'm getting the day off.  Not my usual day off - running Kitten to classes; knitting or reading in the truck or on the job-site all day.  No, I get a real, at home with Kitten, doing whatever we feel like (while catching up on reporting), morning to evening, all day kind of day off!  I'm a bit excited!

 On a completely unrelated but equally exciting note, I've decided to hack off my hair!  Currently, I only have one pic that sort of shows the length.  Tomorrow, I'll upload my camera.  It still hold my 'good-bye, hair' pictures. 

I'm running on half brain, right now.  I was doing really well until I junked out on leftover pre-Halloween candy (the stuff Wolf and I bought for ourselves the day before the ghouls came out - it's only fair).  I felt great for quite a while, but the crash has hit like a ton-a and I have to put my head down... or eat more!

Until then, then.