It was a mistake

When I was younger, I had long blonde hair. When I reminisce and look back in pictures today I feel sad, and have a mental funeral for my long gone hair. If I had that hair now, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but back in sixth grade, I decided that I needed to have pink hair. So my mom reluctantly took my exuberant self to Rite Aid and bought the bright pink hair dye that I desired so intensely. From there we went home where I instantly decided that I had to bleach my hair so it was light enough for neon pink to work. My mom agreed, but only with the condition that only the ends of my hair would be pink and not the whole thing. I agreed to her proposal knowing there would be no better deal than the one she was currently offering me. After an excruciating hour and a half of checking and washing and prodding, my hair was an even brighter blonde than before and was ready to be colored.

After about 2 hours of sitting and waiting, which is very hard for a sixth grader to handle; the ends of my hair were pink. I thought I was satisfied, and for a while I was but once the color faded I was bored and hated my hair. So I pestered my reluctant mother once more forcing her to relent and allow me to re-dye. This time pink hair was too boring, I wanted purple, and it was purple hair that I got. We drove to the same rite aid, walked to the hair dye section and picked out the dark purple hair dye. I loved my hair when it was purple, but when the color finally faded I hated the ends of my hair. My grayish reminisce of purple hair was crispy and flat. My mom then broke the news to me that the only way to mend this was to cut it off. At this point in my life I had only ever had my hair trimmed, so I did not realize how big of a deal this would be.

My mom said I could do whatever I wanted to, so she drove me to her hairdresser. I had never been to my mom’s hair dresser before so I was very excited. The hair dresser’s name was Tracy. She greeted me with a big hug and asked what I was planning to do with my hair. I told her I wanted to cut off the faded purple parts of my hair. She touched the ends and agreed that I should cut them off. Tracy guided me over to her chair and sat me down to survey my tattered hair. Through thoroughly touching and surveying my hair, she decided that it would be easiest to cut my hair if it was put into a pony tail first. I did not know what to think of this because the hairdressers I had been to in the past had never used this technique. So she put my hair into a ponytail and pulled it out a little bit (emphasis on a little bit). She began cutting, and I winced as I felt the little bit of hair I had left fall around my face. I looked in the mirror and felt immediate regret, Tracy had cut off way too much of my hair.

This was when I knew that I truly messed up. My short hair was a mess. I was horrified, I couldn’t straighten it, I couldn’t even curl it to achieve a better look during the school day. When playing sports I had no way of controlling my hair. When my mom attempted to braid it, my hair ended up a frizzy mess. When I tried to put it up on my own I couldn’t, I could only pull it back with a headband and wear horrid pigtails to cheer leading practice. Aesthetically, nothing about my short hair worked, the only thing it was able to do successfully was look bad. All that could be done to my sad hair was to brush it after showering and let it lay boringly against my head in no particular fashion or pull it back with a stretchy headband revealing my forehead that I greatly despised.

I regretted my hair change for the next year and a half until it was a little bit longer and closer to my old hair style. I vowed to myself that I will never cut my hair that way ever again, and when I see pictures of myself with short hair now in 2019 I cringe. Even thinking about my old hair makes me want to cry, if anything I would prefer to pretend that that haircut never happened at all.

Photo by Tobi NDH on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA