Hair's The Thing

Hello You.

I've grown so used to seeing your steady gaze in the mirror. I KNOW you.

We've been through so much together.

I've seen you at your best and frequently, too, at your worst.

I know your laugh lines, best side, sideways tilt to hide that crooked tooth.

You are, perhaps, too familiar.

You are my past, dragged unprotestingly into my present, prepared to be launched over and over into whatever even IS the future.

You've done well enough for good all this time... even during the Shag phase.

And that disastrous designer chop in 1980 that made tight curls surround my head like sharp points of regret. (I still wince)

It's just.

It's not you. It's also, I think, not me, either.

I am not really moving on if I keep holding you to the image of memory, am I? It's a comfort to see you in the mirror.

To selectively ponder a Me that no longer is all of Me. I'm holding you up to my mind's memory as a static character in a kinetic world.

It's time to let you go.

I'm warning you- I mean it. This time I mean it. No backsies.

Now. Now I'm petrified. I've let it airdry so they can see it before I do anything. No makeup. Been crying before I left the house. Face swollen. Took this in my driveway.

Now I want to turn around and run home. Now I want to change my changed mind. How can something so simple mean so much?

How do you matter this much? When did I give an image the power to calm me, enrage me, disgust me, soothe me?

I know there's gray there. I know because every two weeks I subdue it, mercilessly. Exhausted by the routine I've assigned to myself.

Pretending self-loathing is self-care.

Who will I see tonight? Tomorrow?

Who am I?

Too late. Four hours in, two sessions to strip away well-meaning permanent stains, and I am a strange fade of salt/pepper, orange/red/merlot/stubbornly brown.

What have I done? What HAVE I done? (The tears stopped about 2 hours into the appointment.)

I'm committed. It's like every other moment in my life when I stop struggling and face what IS head on. It's time for the self talk of "You don't HAVE to do this. You GET to do this. You CHOOSE to do this. So do it."

No matter that I have no idea what IT is. No matter that I am now aware that I am not in charge of me. I am now a joint-participant in who I will be at the end of this day.

But; aren't I always that? Isn't it true that every decision I've ever made still led to that? Even the decision of STOPPING TIME every two weeks to preserve some memory of the mirrors reflection?

So now I ask "What comes next?" So now I listen to options. So now I realize that youth was never looking me in the eyes each morning. So now I wonder if it's time To. Let. This. Go.

So, sure, we can do what you think is best. So, sure, relying on just me and my own ideas can feel lonely. So, alright, let's do this.

So more chemicals, more layers, more memories, more decisions... all falling away in a swirl of warm water and suds.

Talks of new routines, of 'where do you want to be in two years?' as the stylist [the most patient person in the world, TBH] interviews me for my new position as A Person That Regularly Sees A Stylist.

The goal is to eventually stop coloring my hair. The goal is not to hold on to my mind's eye image of myself. The goal is to embrace the age I will become next week.

And, as evidenced by the photo below: that involves looking more like my two sisters than I ever have.

Ironically, to me at least, my hair is now roughly the color it was when I was two years old. Somewhere, someplace, in a photo album that belonged to the family of my youth, there is young Me. Holding a yellow rose and smiling in some studio portrait.

With red-gold hair. A color that quickly changed to brunette within a few years.

The mirror made me laugh that first night. I stopped to brush my teeth before bed and closed the medicine cabinet door, looking up to catch a glimpse of a somehow familiar stranger.

How long this will remain is unknown. Still planning to eventually embrace that gray. I'm in no hurry now, though; the memory of that young girl has reminded me of a few discussions I need to have with her.

A few more scenes from the past that need to have their fingers uncurled one by one, releasing their grip on my spirit. Some old boxes of 'remember whens' and 'what ifs?' to be sorted through and binned.

So, 64, I'm ready for you. Less frightened at the audacity of change. Less sure that I have all the answers.

Here I come anyway.

~~~~~~~

Comments welcome.