Hair Cut

SO here's the deal. Life has been feeling grrreat and ive been buzzing with plans for the future as i now have my whole life ahead of me. I dont feel completely lost anymore, the big whole in my chest seems to be shrinking and i just feel more grounded. Im not worrying all the time, but I am doing things. I feel more like a real person, like the last few years of my life have been a hazy dream. It has made me realise that actually, i am not just a weak, broken, lost little girl, but actually I have been really poorly!

I forgot what life was like outside of Depression. I thought this was just the way I am. It is hard to remember a time when I actually felt that I had a chance at life, that I didnt dread everyday, that i didnt hate myself so much i just wanted everything to stop. That hurt and pain...the darkness. Its fading. Yay.

So, naturally, i got the impulsive urge to cut my hair off. And now I fear that Cat Lady may have gone slightly bonkers, so I need to calm down a notch. I have so many ideas that I dont know where to start. I think its just the excitement of feeling more like a real person.

Ive had this nagging voice for about a week, the impulse to shave my head and then let it all grow back. The feeling that this will make me more real if I can see my head and know that it is really still there. The slightly nightmarish bit is that I havent really been sleeping, and Ive found myself in the bathroom at 6am, scissors in hand, with the incredible urge and compulsion to cut my hair off. But I have restrained myself from acting on this urge.

Up until yesterday, when I had a busy day. I did some cleaning and ironing for my friends parents (ive started working! Earning myself some money), then meeting a friend for lunch and feeling calm in the middle of a public place. I actually sat in a cafe and ate a sandwhich, surrounded by people, and then I went to the till and paid. And I was smiling and I didnt try to hide my face or look at the floor. I didnt shake when I was talking, or avoid contact with every human being. And then I met my brother briefly and joined him for a chat and a cig. (the sherbert Lemons never really took off).

And then I wanted to go and see Meg because I have been a crap friend recently, just terrible at returning calls or remembering plans and so wrapped up in doing my own thing because I can and because I have the motivation and I can. But by then I was so totlaly exhausted, legs achey, brain starting to fuzzle, that i thought it best I go home back to Bernie where I could regain composure.

So I got home and locked the door and went straight to the bathroom, picked up the scissors, and started hacking away at my hair. And  And by then I didnt quite feel real. I felt like I was watching someone else in the mirror, a blank face. And the more I cut the shorter I wanted it. So I turned away from the mirror and just started snipping as it felt appropriate. Although mayeb this whole thing was entirely inapproprriate.

And then I picked up a lady bikini trimmer for your special area which I found at the back of my stuff cupboard and just zapped a whole section of my head hair right off.

Bert and Ernie started meowing at me, and then I bumbled about the flat for an hour or so, tidying and cutting things out of a mag and putting them in a tin and dancing around to Justin Timberlake. And then i went back in the bathroom and saw the most beautiful, shiny, radiant red locks of hair scattered all over the floor. In the sink, all over the bathroom. And I realised it was mine.

Its odd that Ive never really paid too much attention to my hair, and yet now, here it was just looking like such nice hair on the floor.

I looked in the mirror and talked to the stranger staring back at me, moving her head from side to side. One side of her hair just past the shoulders, the other side short and sticking up. It was like having a conversation with 2 different people. 3 if you include me. My left face looked like a 20year old woman, a bit quirky and arty with a nose stud and funky hair. She looked more grown up. Her eyes looked wide,green. Bright, vibtant, shaped like almonds. And I looked deep into them in the mirror and shook hand with her soul for a moment. She smiled.

My right face looked softer, paler against a thick flicker of red hair that hid parts of her face and tassled in knots on her shoulders. Her reflection of hair in the mirror seemed so much more limp and dead than the wavy golden shiny locks I picked up from the sink and held in my hand. Her eyes looked frightened, dulled, searching. She looked like a lost little girl.

My poor neighbour Hollie is a saint for putting up with me. There's been superglue incidents and self-harm incidents and moving my firniture round and getting trapped in a corner behind a bed and a cupboard incidents and dragging me out of cave and pyjamas and dressing gown incidents because apparantly it is not normal to hibernate for weeks at a time. And now the hair hacking incident.

Luckily, I was in a pretty peachy mood, and as I was due to go out with Hollie at 8 to see Tin Tin at the cinema (good film btw, how do they make animation look that good? its amazing)....anyway, I knocked on her door which is exactly 5 steps across the corridor from my door and asked of she could sort me out.
SO out come more scissors and, although I love her dearly, and she snipped away entirely on my encouragement, I think this made the situation a whole lot worse.

So we left it and I played with my hair for a bit (using bits on the floor to make a beard and mostauche etc) and then i went to the cinema sporting a very strange hairstyle, but luckily it is dark in there.

And this is the weird bit...
I didnt wake up this morning and go to the mirror and cry...
  I woke up this morning and had this vague recollection of hair getting snipped, tidied up, put on a coat anda hat, and went to the hairdressers where a nice lady sorted me out. Normally I hate the hairdressers, sitting in front of a mirror trying to avoid eye contact with both myself and the reflection and the hairdresser. Having to talk to a random person about Eastenders and non-existant holidays and the weather. And not even being able to look in the mirror when theyve finished the hair cut and ask if its ok, so just saying yeah. But the lady was nice and we had a right giggle about hair catastrophes. I couldnt really afford to get it cut but its done now.

 And now I have short hair and its kind of funky but I feel quite naked. Im not too bothered about it, I just hate that bit when you go out and someone says "oh youve had a haircut" and you're like "really?". I dont like people looking at me, I never know what they're thinking.

But anyway, its done now, and on the plus side it is getting cold out so i can always wear a hat, and I have a nice collection of raggy bits of material and ribbons that I like to tie round my head and this might improve the general look. But I feel a bit like I have just reinvented myself, which is cool. I just hope I dont sort of wake up soon and regret it. It will always grow back I guess.

Have I gone mad?
Does it even matter if Im happy? I dont know if I look like a boy now, or a lesbian, or someone who has gone nuts and hacked thier hair out....but beauty is within anyway and now that my hair is less heavy i feel that my brain has more space to breathe. I just hope I dont regret it when I have to face people I know and they look at me funny and I realise I have brought attention to myself and.....it will grow back anyway so doesnt matter. The point is I feel more me on the inside, even if I look like someone else on the outside. Although maybe that reflection is the real me?

Anyway, Im rambling. I feel brand new, like a baby with not much hair and now it can all grow back, and my life can begin again, as the new me. SO I am saying goodbye to the frightened wide eyed green eyed girl, and goodbye to the non-life dithering cat lady, and shouting at her voices to fuck off because I am worth something despite what they tell me....and saying Hello to a whole new chapter in Laura's Locket.

Best is yet to come :-)