i cut off all of my hair

just to feel something

I’ve been in a bit of a rut, which may be a bit of an understatement. I’ve opted for long walks and journaling instead of running lately. I can’t seem to finish any projects. Working in a public library in the summer months is, without fail, medium-to-high-grade chaos, and it feels difficult to rally for myself at the end of the day. I’m in that mid-summer slump that seems to creep up on me every July. I’m feeling the weight of the year I’ve had. It’s half over, which seems like a natural point of reflection (or breaking point, if that suits you better). So let’s cut to the chase (pun intended): I cut off all my hair.

6”

I think it’s pretty common to seek a drastic change after experiencing life-altering events over which you had absolutely no control. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for hair everywhere, it’s often the first thing that receives the burden of change.

I’ve had some version of a bob for most of my 20s barring the time I grew my hair longer for my wedding when I was 28 and the ultra-short pixie cut I had when I was 22. In high school, I had long, straight hair with heavy honey highlights. I remember chopping it all off right after submitting all of my college applications. I grew it out all through college, and then I chopped some of it off the fall semester of my senior year, a couple of months after my 21st birthday. A few months after that, I put my hair in a ponytail and cut it with kitchen shears in my bedroom.

This trend continued through my twenties. Something would happen, I would turn to my hair. By the time I was 25, I’d sported everything from a full head of horse-girl hair to a platinum pixie, to a short, pink shag with an undercut, to a silvery bob. I would always settle back into a bob in the less tumultuous times (but how much of this decade is not turbulent???).

ages from left to right: 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28

Before this most recent chop, the last time I’d done something drastic with my hair was last July when I got bangs after Going Through It in therapy. During this past year, my superficial ambition was to have long, princess hair again now that I am a more mature, more certain version of myself. Then this year proved itself to be unpredictable (what year isn’t, though?). I noticed I started getting attached to the length of my hair, estimating with my fingertips to figure out where it would fall in a month, two months. I’d look at photos of myself from the month before to reassure myself that it had, in fact, grown the half inch I’d suspected. I felt such pride when someone would tell me my hair was getting so long.

But the longer it grew, the less I felt like myself. I had used my long hair as a security blanket in my younger and more vulnerable years, and suddenly having all of this weight on my head felt unbearable. It felt like an apparition of a younger me was stretching herself to fill in the space of everything I’d become since I’d been her. This is when I knew it was time, so one miserably humid and hot afternoon last week, I cut it all off.

i need to get it fixed, but here’s where we are

I know hair changes can insinuate some level of instability or uncertainty (2007 Britney, did I have to say it?), but I think we turn to such a change because we are making a conscious effort to feel better. We use it to impose a sense of control on a situation that is unrelated to hair at all. We use it to mark beginnings and ends. None of this is news. We know it’s not about the hair, it’s about creating an opportunity. Maybe the opportunity is to disguise the part of us that is in pain, maybe it is to show others that we are more than our appearance. Even if we end up regretting it, we learn something from the emotions surrounding and following the decision. Hair grows back, after all.

Thanks for tuning in <3