Don’t Cry Over Spilled Hair
You know how the saying goes: “Don’t cry over spilled hair.” Whatever, it’s something like that. That’s what I’m telling myself right now as I’m sitting in this salon chair, cutting off over 10 inches of my long, blonde hair. It’s just hair. It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent years growing it out. It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on products and countless hours maintaining it, keeping it looking and feeling healthy. It doesn’t matter that, when I’m in front of a camera, it’s the one thing I know I can count on to make me feel confident and beautiful. No, none of that matters because: it’s just hair.
Anyone who has ever had hair knows that hair isn’t just hair (fun drinking game idea, take a shot every time you read the word “hair” and see how many paragraphs it takes for you to die). For a lot of people, hair holds deep cultural significance. It plays a large role in how many people embrace their gender, their womanhood, their femininity. For me, my hair represents a singular constant in my life of increasing uncertainty. I’ve been growing it out since I graduated from college (with the exception of one unexpected haircut where the rogue stylist absolutely insisted he’d only cut two inches of hair, while actually hacking off about EIGHT). During that time, I went from being a relatively normal college student with a wide-open future of bright prospects to, well…not such bright prospects. I lost jobs, I lost relationships, I lost educational opportunities, I lost hope, but my hair, my constant companion, was always there. When it felt like my life was moving backwards, like my life was moving in the opposite direction of everyone else I knew, the constant growth of my hair proved that, in fact, time was still marching forward.
Where I may not have control over much else in my life, I had control over my hair. I may not be able to have the job that I want, live where I want, pursue any of the passions that I want, get my body to function the way that I want… but I know that with some heat protectant, a flat iron, and 30 minutes, I can get my hair to look exactly how I want. And then maybe, just maybe, when I look like I’m in control, I might start to feel that way, too. There is certainly something to be said about the trite phrase, spoken in front of many a mirror: “look good, feel good.” While having lustrous, silky hair certainly didn’t cure my disease or lessen my pain in any way, being able to look in the mirror and feel like a presentable human being did a lot for my mental state, especially during periods where things felt particularly dark. When I was finally able to do my hair again after a month of torturous surgical recovery in July, I looked at myself in a mirror and felt, in some small way, like myself again.
I’ve been considering this big chop for quite some time now. I had hoped that with my intrathecal pump surgery in June, I would have a solid enough handle on my pain-management to be able to wash my hair without absolute agony, but we still haven’t gotten the device to work for me. Right now, my hair washing process brings me to tears on a weekly basis; even with my shower chair, being upright in the shower long enough to shampoo and deep condition my thick, waist-length hair is simply unbearable. I clear my schedule for the entire day every Sunday, knowing that washing my hair is going to be such an ordeal that I won’t have the stamina to do anything else. I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. I know this will make my life immeasurably easier. But I also know that this feels like my disease taking away yet another facet of my identity, yet another thing that I cared about that’s being ripped away from me. Maybe that sounds dramatic because, obviously, it’s just hair. In the grand scheme of all the things I have lost, yes, this is a small thing. But it’s not nothing. And sometimes a sum of many small things can feel like a big, big thing.
