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July 17, 2007
Goodbye, Hair, Goodbye
My hair is my BFF. No, seriously, it is. I've always been very attached to it. One of my earliest traumatic experiences was in first grade, when my mom decided to "trim" my hair herself and cut off six inches. Whether this was because she was finally follow through on her threat that "REBECCA MICHELLE, IF YOU DON'T BRUSH YOUR HAIR MORE OFTEN TO KEEP IT FROM GETTING SNARLY, SO HELP ME, I'LL CUT IT ALL OFF" or just that she had trouble trimming it evenly and kept cutting and cutting until it was all gone, I was devastated. In my head, my hair should have always looked like this:
Bye bye, long hair. Anyway, after that, I grew my hair right back out, and from then on, I had long hair (except for a brief period during which I was growing out a perm and cut it very short). Always. Long hair. In fact, by high school, I had a system down. Every August, I got my hair cut four or five or six inches, and then let it grow all throughout the year without any further attention. Occasionally I got one trim in the winter, but that was it. I had one hairstylist, Cindy, who knew me and knew better than to suggest anything as crazy as--gasp!--layers or a different length (damn you Jennifer Aniston, I would not be suckered into your crazy hair shennanigans). And all through college, I continued with this plan. Me and my long, straight hair that never came above my shoulders.
And then in college, something crazy came over me. My senior year, I suddenly decided that I was feeling good, I was ready to tackle the world, I was ready to declare that I was no longer emotionally stunted at age seven (my haaaaaaaair, mom, how could you?) and was ready for an Adult haircut. So in February, I made Lauren take a picture of my long, child-style hair:
and I trotted off to an unknown salon in Ohio to get it cut. Short. And I came home with this:
Now, upon reflection, I should have stuck with that. It was actually kind of a fun cut, I suppose, and a HUGE change, since I'd never had my hair shorter than my shoulders since sixth grade. But no, that wasn't short or drastic enough for me, so I went and had a girl who I worked with shorten it for me, resulting in this:
And I had fun with it, I truly did. Some days I straightened it. Some days I put a ton of stupid little clips in it. Some days I just let it be. It was a huge pain in my ass and took way too long to style, but I enjoyed it. For like two months. And then I wanted my hair back. And so I grew it, and it took a damn year and a half, but for my wedding, my hair was the perfect length:
And of course, then I just had to do something stupid. So two weeks after our wedding, I cut it, and I got those long sideswept bangs that everyone was getting at the time (see Rebecca? This is what happens when you follow a trend) and... yeah. Let's just say it wasn't good. And right then and there, I decided it was time to grow my hair out. And I mean, grow it out. I literally went two years without so much as a trim. I finally got it trimmed this past January, and that brings us to today. Which looks like this:
That's earlier today. The day my hair went away.
I donated my hair to Locks of Love today and as nice as it is to not feel like there's a small child hanging from my head when it's in a ponytail or something, I miss it. A lot. I haven't taken a picture of the new cut yet, but I will. It's actually longer even than the first cut I got my senior year of college, long enough for a short, perky ponytail. But man, am I feeling the loss.
All gone.
Posted to Nostalgia at July 17, 2007 03:09 PM