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.

Blackout.

I tried to stop drinking alcohol completely.

I don't want to drink anymore, so I stopped for a while.  I knew that I was only drinking to numb myself and try to make myself feel something (anything!).  And I was hiding from things I didn't want to think about, all at the expense of my liver.  It worked well to drink until I couldn't quite think at all.  I thought it all worked quite well.

But every rational and intelligent part of me can admit it:  Alcohol really makes things worse, when it comes down to it.  Yet, when I was doing it, every time I was actually drinking, it felt like it was helping.  I was not rational and I was not myself.

 I hated myself.
 I wasn't in reality.
I didn't like reality.

I drink now, but occasionally, and try not to do so excessively.  I at least know why I am drinking, and I think about those reasons with every swallow.

****

It was a few months ago that I started blacking out completely when I drank a certain amount.  I would have no memory of anything that happened after I crossed that certain limit.

Blank.

Completely darkness.

I remember nothing of those nights.  I remember absolutely nothing, and I can't bring any of it forth in my mind.  It's just not there.  Apparently, I can be very hilarious when I'm not even aware that I'm...  awake?  I am doing lots of things, and walking and talking and apparently thinking, yet I am in a blackout.  I don't remember any of it.  I don't know any of it.  It is as if I wasn't even there.  I mean, I wasn't there, was I?  I wasn't there.  I was absent.

I could also be really scary.  I would spend hours telling Sam about every single thing he had to make sure the kids knew if I died.  I wanted to tell him every family story, and memory, and make sure he knew what each thing was in my jewelry box, or in our cupboards that were family heirlooms.  I would know I was going to die, I guess.  I don't remember.  I did know every single thing that I needed to tell him and it was a lot.

That scares me, to blackout.  It scares me to have Sam recall hours we spent together "awake," when that time is completely gone for me.  I don't want that.  The kids are never awake when I drink, and I don't like it... I don't want it... and I try not to do it at all...

Having a little champagne or wine on a romantic date, or a beer on a hot summer day... I want to do those kinds of things... but I want them to be memorable and infrequent... special.  I'll admit it.  It became a daily thing... drinking at least a few glasses of wine every single day.  And some nights we would drink so much that I stopped remembering those nights.  Drinking became more than unhealthy and self-destructive. It was terrifying.

I was scared I couldn't remember.
But I was scared that I couldn't stop.
It wasn't so scary, and I could... I did it.
And I feel better.

God.

It feels better to wake up, and actually remember the falling asleep part

New Mexico.

I went to New Mexico.  It was two summers ago.
I shouldn't write about it like it's something monumental... Not now...
But when she is here, I remember, and I think about that time.  It was different than her being here, at this house.  I'm remembering, now.  Looking back.

I went to New Mexico because my sister was there.  I needed her: I admitted and acted upon that feeling. She needed me:  I had known that for years.

It was two years ago, yes.  It was August.  She and I were there, in the middle of the Southwest, far away from Vermont, and it felt like we were ourselves, and we were sisters, and we were all we should be... together.

I had never flown in a plane alone before.  I was scared.  I didn't think I could do anything by myself anymore.  I had become what I ought to be:  I was a mommy.  I was a wife.  I was a mother.  I was a housewife.  I was a stay-at-home-mom.  Ought that have been my life?  I was a teacher before that.  I was a sister.  I was a daughter.  I was a granddaughter.  I was an artist, and a reader, and a writer, and a lover, and a liver.  I mean, I lived. I felt alive.  I was a woman.  I was a woman.

Not a piece of meat.  Not an organ.  Not a category.  Not a peg.  I didn't fit into one hole.  I was never that kind of girl.  I was a dream. I dreamed.

New Mexico is the "Land of Enchantment."  It's so beautiful.  It is a land of dreams.  It looks like a dream.  I mean, it felt like a dream on my skin and in my mouth.  It felt like a dream, drowning all my senses.  I had never seen anything like New Mexico in my life.  Seeing something so new, so different, so scary and beautiful is jarring.  It is a shock to any system.  It is electrifying.  It stimulates.

And I never knew all those nerves that were zinging and zapping.  I didn't know how to feel that way.  I didn't know how to live that way.  I didn't know a life like that.  I didn't think I should know it.  I didn't think I was supposed to know any of it.  And I was scared to feel any of it.

New Mexico.

How life changed for me after that.  I guess it just confused.  I just became confused.  I didn't want to leave. Honestly, I didn't want to go home!  I wanted to stay with my sister!  I wanted to stay with my little sister.  I wanted to be a part of all the next parts of her life there.  It felt like I was supposed to be there, and know what to do next. I was flying away from her new adobe rental. I was convinced I was supposed to caulk her bathtub/shower there, and I knew how to build an enclosure around the water heater, and I knew what to do to make her bedroom cozy, and the living room just right, and the kitchen livable...

Or I was supposed to help the Fretwell's make space for her... the upstairs, glassed-in porch... I was supposed to make her a space there, and help Zeno make room... because that's what Craig, his dad, would have wanted. He had shoved stuff into that space to get it out of the way.  It was convenient storage, not sentimental... He would have wanted to make room for Mikhaila in that stone house in Las Vegas, NM.  God.  I wasn't supposed to leave before I had done all those things... but I did leave.  I left.

It was almost September. My twins were starting school.  I had to be in Vermont.  And Mikhaila was just starting her college classes.  I was distracted.  I was pulled away.  Not by Vermont.  I was pulled away because I was not confident enough to know I was capable and worthy on my own.  As soon as someone, anyone who seemed consequential, made me feel like I wasn't strong enough to do anything by myself...  I listened.

I can't explain why I have always listened to everyone but myself, for several years, now, but that's what I have done.  I look around for someone to tell me what to do.  I look for someone who knows what the fuck is going on... I mean, I don't feel like I know what the fuck's going on, really.  I really don't.

That makes me sick, that I listen and need someone to tell me what to do.  If anyone, looking back at my life, my little sister should be the one who knows me best of all and most of all and I should trust her.  She always, always says:  "You are strong.  You are Joanna!"

My sissy and I, we should both be, (and have always been), a wall of strength and power.
We are strong and powerful, especially together.  But I think we both quietly wonder if we are any of that stuff.  I know we both hesitate and think:  "Can I? Can we?"

Yes, we could.  But we haven't, I know.  We have stopped short, pulled the emergency brake, and skidded to a stop with our eyes closed.  We open one eye at a time and say, "Oh, phew."

"Wow, we're still alive."

Like we wouldn't be... Like we should only just be relieved... When, truly, we should have our boots on the gas pedal, with the windows down.

It's okay if we are laughing when the wind whips through our hair and makes us feel disoriented.  We are still driving.  And It's okay if we stop if it is to dance in the dawn sunshine.  It's not just okay:  It's good if we dance in the early morning sunshine.  It's nice to be awake and feel the warmth and headiness.  We can feel dizzy in fear, but freedom.

Our long shadows dance with us.  We don't need anybody else.  Not to live.  Not to breathe.  I mean, no one person should need someone else to help them live and breathe.  Not me.  Not her.  Not nobody.