The Night of Scissors and... Fire?

The other night I pulled my ponytail to one side and cut off a huge chunk of it with a pair of scissors. The scissors happened to be on the bedside table, so it was easy peasy.  I just did it.

Children do things like that.  It's a story as old as time.  Girl, did you not cut your Barbie doll's hair off?  You thought you were doing a good job, right?  I always did.  But some kids see scissors and can't help but cut a couch cushion (my child), or a tablecloth (my little sister), or their sibling's hair (my big sister)... It must be a sense of rebellion or freedom?  Scissors!  Cut, cut, CUT!
Cut all the things!

Yeah, my older sister cut my hair, (secretly of course), when I was about three or four, and I have had bangs ever since.  My mom said, "I was so upset, but then I realized you looked a lot cuter with bangs."  Nice. Thank you, Marguerite.  I am prettier with bangs.  (Hey, At least she didn't stab me with them.  My older sister tended to want to hurt me for various reasons, quite often, when we were kids).

I didn't care. I mean, I didn't care about cutting the end of my ponytail off with kitchen scissors the other night.  It wasn't about rebellion, I truly just didn't give a fucking shit.  I just became the kind of girl (woman ?) who does that kind of shit.  I'm the kind of girl who doesn't give a shit.
Fuck it.
Maybe I was making a statement that would be very difficult to interpret because I really wasn't and I'd like to write about something amazing that I was rebelling or doing when I cut my hair, but I can't think of a damn reason.

Just how they like it.

Yet, I'm a little crazy if you didn't know.  I really just saw the scissors and did it without even thinking.  I know Sam walked into the room and I filled his hand with hair and he ripped the scissors away from me telling me I was acting crazy.  "What the fuck?  Why would you do that?"
I didn't feel so crazy at the time.  I was like, "Who cares?"

I used to like to look nice, and I cared a bit more about my hair.  I know I don't have a perfect face, and I'm not beautiful, (certainly which would be revealed if I was bald).  I know my hair can easily affect my appearance.  I cut a chunk off without really caring about anything like that.

Maybe I am sick of being blonde.
I'm sick of having to damage my hair to try and make it just right, and compliment my skin tone, or spend a crap-ton of money at a salon to have it highlighted and "look natural."

I'm not blonde.  Well, I did dye my hair all blonde.  Sam has been asking me to do this since we got married. When I went in the other direction and dyed it all brown, he hated it and has said he doesn't want to see any brown in my hair at all.  Ever again.  Bad.

Some people have to keep everything together--use a flat iron, and apply makeup every day!--or they look like a mess, or feel like a mess.  I guess I'm lucky that I don't look like a hot mess unless I really, absolutely don't do a darn thing when I wake up in the morning (Like I don't smooth my hair into a ponytail, or wash my face, or change out of pajamas, or...)  I might feel like a mess, but I also don't really look in the mirror very often. I haven't worried about being perfect for such a long time, and I guess that's part of my problem?
Maybe I'd feel better if I looked better?  Or if I cared?
I'm low maintenance if no one expresses expectations for me--That just freaks me out.  Even with my job, I will tell you my students thought I looked pretty fabulous every day.  (It was the shoe and boot collection, am I right?). Messy bun, and just a swipe of mascara, before I rush out the door to teach?  I showered. I'm dressed. I'm good.  

So.

Where was I?
I have recently... Let's see...  Yes, I cut my own hair without even looking in a mirror.
I also "high-lift-blonded" the shit out of my hair, until it was just about platinum.  (I don't think anyone reads this who knows anything about hair coloring.  I could have said I bleached the shit out of my hair until it was blonde, but I didn't actually do that, because I didn't want all my hair to just break off.  I actually cared!  See?!  I do care.  High-lift color is more gentle... so there you go.  (Hair color 101).

I also care about making Sam happy, yet I don't want to pay $120 to go to a salon (I really like that salon, and I have very good friends who work there), to get highlights anymore.  We can't afford that.  We haven't been able to pay for that kind of hair maintenance luxury for a while now.  The last time I went, in June 2016, it was because my mom gave me money to go get it done.  "You need blonde hair!"  She saw me and was aghast...  because my hair... it looked... so...  brown?

I look prettier very, very blonde, don't you know?
That's what I'm told.
Often.
No, that's not true.
It's just whenever my mother sees me, or my husband feels like commenting about it.

"You are just a blonde," I've been told.  That's the way it is.

Me at 12

I was born with brown hair.  My hair is brown.  It's not growing from my scalp with the lovely pale, buttery highlights.  Nope.  Just plain brown.  I actually don't remember caring what color my hair was.  I remember not liking having big feet and a big nose, and no one wants pimples, but I don't remember ever thinking much about my hair.  It was a whatever type of thing.  Don't care if I have brown hair or long or short fingernails, or that I had freckles across my nose and cheeks.  I didn't really think about that stuff.  I wasn't sexualized, which honestly has to be when girls start worrying about stupid shit until older boys started paying a lot of attention to me.  And even then, my mom had to tell me they were paying attention to me.  And she explained to me what I had to do...  to be... blonde.

Blossom and Six.

I know it was time to not have the brown, straight hair that just happened to me genetically after I was 13 or 14. Maybe it was not the people around me who made it impossible for me to just be "natural."  I mean, it was the early '90s, and it was all about perms and "frosting."  (Oh my.  Luckily I made it through the last part of that before I graduated from high school).

Blossom was a popular show on television at the time, and people at our middle school called my best friend and me, "Blossom and Six."  I was Blossom.  I swear I even dressed like her.
I didn't know if I should embrace how I looked or know I could look a whole lot better than... Blossom.  I didn't want to be compared to her.  I also didn't want to be rude, or think, "She's not pretty!" if people really thought I looked like her.  I did have a long face and my nose looked bigger when I was in middle school.  I was growing into my "looks."

"Blossom" on "What Not to Wear."

Let's see, how did those actresses age?

"Six" wearing not so much.

Oh goodness, and being tan became a super big deal!  I remember my mom bought me Coppertone QT self-tanning lotion, which was the first "sunless tanning lotion" ever.  It is so ridiculously funny to think about how bad that stuff was now that they have made advancements in the self-tanning lotion science.  Anyway, I was prettier with a tan.  Don't get me wrong, I sound like my mom was putting me down.  No way.  I had the coolest mom in the 90s, and I really did need a confidence boost.  The "ugly stage" some kids go through during puberty, well, it was traumatic for me.

Obviously being tan was better, too.  Blond hair and a tan.  I had pale, Irish/Russian skin, and I slathered on the QT.  I remember the first time I went to 8th grade all tan, after lathering that stuff all over my body.  I felt awesome, and I totally looked hot for an early 90s 8th grader.  However, after school, during track practice, the sweat made orange streaks run down my arms and legs.  I remember just spraying my water bottle on my face and rubbing it all around, because having a runny orange face could be a disaster, yeah?  Then I just let all my friends pay tic-tac-toe on my legs because you could just lightly use a fingernail and reveal my pale skin under the orange.  I let my team write funny things on my skin with their fingernails.  Hey, that's grace, I would say, for a middle school age girl.  I thought it was funny. One of the female track coaches saw my body on the bus ride back to school and said, "Oh, that's disturbing," when I explained why I had words and patterns all over my visible body parts.
Nah.  I had a sense of humor about it all, at least!  I could have freaked out.  I didn't.
 I just realized that stuff sucked and I wasn't going to use it anymore.

Tanning beds.  Those were great when I was in high school.  No one got to use them, but my mom let me.  I remember after the school's spring break I was sitting on a bench where all the "cool" kids hung out as school got out, in the lobby area, and a girl, (let's be honest here, I was her biggest threat.  She got best dressed in middle school in Springfield, I got best dressed in Bellows Falls Middle School...  I was killing it. She was no competition...  Anyway...), asked me if I had gone somewhere spring vacation.  I remember saying, "Florida...  The Bahamas... No, just kidding a tanning bed."  And she was more jealous that I got to use a tanning bed, than if I had actually traveled to a tropical location.

I wonder what I would have been like if I was just myself.  I mean, I loved fashion, and nobody could tell me how to dress, but I didn't really know that my brown hair was "mousy" until my mom told me it was.

I think I would have done okay with brown hair.
But now I'm a blonde.  B For life!
Can't stop.