SURVIVING MY BAD HAIR DECADE

THIS ESSAY IS AN UNEDITED WORK IN PROGRESS…

It was a hot and sticky day. I pointed out the window to the cows and said “MOOOO.” My skin stuck to the vinyl seat of the unairconditioned coup as we passed by the pasture to the apartment. As I Mooed I got a mouthful of hair in my mouth. The rest of my fine licks stuck to my skin, the tips tickling ears, and lashing into my eyes.

I turned to my mom whose new popular “Dorothy Hamill” cut was off of her face as she drove down the river road.

“Mom, I want my hair cut like yours, I hate it being all over my face,” I said.

“We’ll think about it,” she said.

My mom and I lived in an apartment together. This was only time of my life that it was just the two of us, before she married my stepdad. I fantasized about a closeness with my mother that I never got. From my earliest memory, I felt myself pining for her attention, but she was always occupied with something else or someone else. I made up invisible friends because my mom didn’t have an interest in talking to me. I seemed to irritate her. “Okaaaaayyy” she’d say to shut me up. She would send me to my room to play or put me in front of a television show. Whether sitting next to me in the car or across the room or across the county, she always felt a million miles away. For whatever reason, her heart was in a vault long before she became my mom. I wasn’t sure why. Other members of my family felt so much warmer than her, I failed to understand why she felt so off. Despite feeling distant to my mom, I wished she would let me be like her. All I wanted in the moment was to be my mom to win her love.

My mother’s emotional borders felt like boulders to me even at that tender age. I imagined them as such. My mind wanted to believe that the warmth and love was there because I saw her bring it out around animals and other the people. She locked up her joyful side for me. Her maternal love for me was like a treasure that was locked away and brought out only when it suited her. My mind thought of superheros and story book characters that were able to break barriers to reveal their true selves.

The southern nineteen seventies were surrounded by media super heroes and themes that danced around me, giving me hope for gaining the love of my mom. I felt if only I could be a hero, or good at everything, maybe I would be good enough to lure her maternal love out of its cave. If only I could just teach myself how to do anything I want like MacGyver, I would have the key to her chastened heart. My mind wandered at church as the story of the stone was rolled away form Jesus’ tomb, I wondered if that was true for “alive people” too. I wondered if the strain and tension and walls I felt with my mother could be moved away like a stone. I thought about the Incredible Hulk and how he could just break apart whatever he wanted, crush any wall. I looked at the stained glass mosaic in our church and thought of how it looked like it was made of something crushed to a million pieces. All walls can break, I thought.

My hand was gently cupped inside my grandmothers hand and resting lightly on the green velvety pew cushion. I looked up at my grandmother and she smiled to me. I felt warmth beaming from her, the love I desired from my mom. I felt filled with happiness and grateful for my grandmother as I looked back at the shining stained glass. I looked at the cross in the center of the mosaic burst of color. From the pulpit, the message that God never makes mistakes was already set into my brain. I wasn’t convinced. I though maybe God had made a mistake, because maybe my Grandmother should have been my mom. Regardless, I treasured every second I spent near her. If she wasn’t my “real mom,” she certainly was an angel sent by God just for me. I looked at her silvery hair shining the same as the cross and thought, “MY angel.”

When my mom and I got to the apartment, I turned on the TV and there was Dorothy Hamill, gliding on the ice, looking graceful and feminine wither bowl bob.

“Pleeeeease mom, I want my hair cut like yours. I want my hair cut like hers,” I begged.

“Okaaaaaay…next time,” she said from the other room. The real wall between us felt like her emotional barrier personified. I could only see the top of her as she made bread in the kitchen.

“Can I help?”

“No”

I was disappointed because I wanted to help her, to be hands on with her…to do what she did so as to build a bridge between us but I was excited about getting my hair cut that I contented myself watching my half-bodied mother from the floor of the living room as she worked in the kitchen. Anything I saw her do, I pretended to do the same. If she got a phone call, I would get a phone call. If she checked the over, I mimicked her.

Sitting in front of the television, watching trailers and ads, my mind filled with images of invisible barriers from Star Trek, the TV show. Sitting alone in the living room, seeing my mother in parts and pieces, I longed to insert myself as a piece of her. I wanted to be an artist like her, I begged for her to teach me art, sewing, pottery and all things creative. I was hungry to learn. If I stayed quiet, I was allowed to watch. I tried to catalog in my mind everything she did. I created an internal library. I repeated in my mind over and over again her creative processes with hopes to one day imitate her and to one day be her.

And a few weeks later, my mom took me to her hair stylist, on the second floor of a building overlooking the street across from the university. There were bees in the window as I got my hair cut into the famous Dorothy bowl bob. I sat nervously waiting to be turned away from the bee window toward the mirror for my big reveal. As I turned around in the chair, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the haircut. I kind of liked it and also kind of immediately regretted it. It didn’t look like my mom or even a girl. I didn’t have the curves and womanly features to distinguish me from a little boy. I looked like a boy. My fantasies of looking feminine like my mother vanished as soon as I realized that it would take more than a haircut to turn me into the woman I wanted to be.

On the way home, with the windows down, hair still flew in my face. I was upset. Maybe I could become a boy instead, I thought. We pulled up to our apartment complex and my mom took me to the playground swings.

A mom pushing her son on the swing asked my mom, “How old is he?”

“Four” my mom relplied.

There’s my confirmation! I thought to myself….Everyone thinks I’m a boy now.

Maybe I really could be a boy instead. I was a rough and tumble tomboy to begin already. I loved everything climbing tree and catching frogs as much as I loved dolls and clothes. I loved playing ball and my train set. I loved monsters and action figures and everything that 1970s boys loved. The more I though about it, the more I though that indeed maybe it was more fitting for me to be a boy than a girl now that I looked like one.

For about a year my mom generally entertained my desires by letting me wear tees and jeans instead of dresses. I didn’t tell her I was trying to be a boy during that time, I just told her I hated pink and hated dresses. I would swim in shorts and run around with no shirt on like the other little boys and I loved it.

“Get ready to go to the pool,” my mom said

“I’m ready!” I said standing in the living room bare-chested with only my shorts.

“No, you have to wear a one piece. You are too old to go with out a shirt”

“What? Why?” I cried, “I always go to the pool in my shorts, What if I wear a shirt with it too” I pleaded.

“Big girls can’t wear shorts and shirts to the pool. You have to learn to be more lady like now that you are getting older.”

“But I look like a boy, no one can tell!  Please, let me wear my shorts, I don’t like the one piece,” I said staring tat the one piece.

“Do you want to go to the pool or not” she said.

“I do.” I said

“Ok, then you HAVE  to wear the one piece,” she said handing me the purple suit.

I went to my room to change. Putting in the tight one piece on after having the freedom of shorts and no shirt felt like a straight jacket.

We went to the pool and when I jumped in, the top of my suit filled with an air bubble and the kid next to me burst out laughing, making me feel even worse. I dove deeper into the pool, letting the sounds of the water drown out the laughter above. I wished I was a mermaid living in the tranquility of ocean waves.

When I got out of the water, the laughing kid said, “I thought you were a boy,”

“Yeah, I know,” I said as my mom waved for me to come in, “I was trying to be, but it didn’t work.”

My grandfather use to tell me that if I kissed my elbow, I could turn into a boy so I would try for hours to kiss my elbow, hoping I could change sexes back and forth like a chameleon changes colors. I liked as many things about the idea of being a girl as I liked about being a boy. I wished I could be both or maybe be neither.

My grandmother was a buyer for children’s clothing at a locally owned department store. The designer brands’ sales reps gave her sample clothes for me. Thanks to them, I developed a collection of fancy dresses and designer threads. I was the only six year old that I knew with a real rabbits’ fur coat. Looking back, I oppose the use of real fur and suppose its regrettable to have owned one, but as a kid I beamed with pride over that coat. The softness of it felt like a hug from my grandmother. It was her hard work and kind reputation that acquired such a wonderful gift for me. My mom hated the coat as it deposited white hairs, shedding on her red car upholstery. She forbade me to wear it except during special occasions. She also hated my love of fashion and my insistence on different ways I would want to dress. She told my grandmother one day, “You created a monster. She’s obsessed with clothes!” I was obsessed with clothes but it wasn’t my grandmother’s fault. She and I shared the bond of recreating yourself daily from look to look and exploring fashion. My grandmother and I shared something my mother didn’t understand and didn’t like. We were monsters together.

Walking through the department store on the way to my grandmother’s office, I’d walk up and down the clothes racks touching the fabrics. After she was done with her work, my she would take me to shop with her. We’d give our opinions to each other on all the new trends. My grandmother would ooh and ahh at the seasons’ newest colors as I held them up for her to try.

“Try this one, Grandma,” I said with a new navy toned dress. I knew that my grandmother was self conscious of her weight and liked to style herself accordingly. I searched for items in “her style” and “her colors” as the times designated women and girls into seasons and types. A rite of passage was having your “colors done” and declaring a style (natural, glam, classic, preppy, and so on). Grandma was a “Classic Winter” meaning she was to wear jewel tones with styles reminiscent of the 1950s.

“Oh that’s really nice, let’s try it,” she said grabbing it from my hands.

In the dressing room, she modeled the dress. She looked so beautiful, her smiling with magenta lips, her silver hair glistening in contrast to the new navy.  

“It’s perfect,” I said. I wanted to be just like her. She was the image of an angel and a classic classy lady. Before marrying my grandfather, my Grandmother’s nickname was Tilly after a comic strip character by the same name. The strongly independent woman was a fashionista and the strip included a paper doll draped with all the latest trends. The quick whitted, sharp tongued comic Tilly was the perfect metaphor for my Grandmother, the Classic Winter. The camaraderie I found with my grandmother as we recreated ourselves over and over again in the department store dressing room gave me insight into a future with endless possibilities. Creating new looks, changing with the times, trying a bold color that I was previously too afraid to try, stepping out of my comfort zone with a new look, were all lessons I learned by playing dress up with my grandmother as each new season gave way to another yet to come.

My grandmother purchased our new dresses and three cute girls in pigtails walked by us. My vision splendor melted with envy. They girls looked so girlie and I wanted to look like them so badly. For a kid my age, hair was like a play toy, one that was gifted to girls and one that was stolen from me. I wanted to wear pigtails and ponytails and buns. I wanted braids with pastel animal barrettes. I wanted someone to curl my hair like Shirley Temple and iron it straight down my back like Cher. In the department store, I abandoned the idea of becoming a boy and decided I wanted to be an ever evolving woman. I wanted my ears pierced and long hair to play. I wanted a wardrobe of clothes inspired by runway designers and rebel rock stars.

I was obsessed with clothes. To my mother’s dismay and my grandmother’s delight, I delved deeper into the fashion world. I would draw designs and  I spent Saturday mornings watching the world runway shows instead of cartoons. I loved seeing the models, so sleek and feminine. For my sixth birthday, my mom let me get my ears pierced which helped to distinguish me as a girl. However, that made the bullying worse.

“Why do you have a boy cut?” asked a girl in the pool locker room

“My parents makes me,” I said.

“WOW, what’d you do to deserve THAT!”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I turned away from her. What DID I do to deserve this?

I begged my mom to let me grow my hair back out. Over and over and she responded with, “You don’t know how to take care of it, she said.

“Mom, I’ll learn, I promise! Please just give me a chance.”

This conversation was one we had multiple times a week. I would get teased and made fun of about my hair daily. I avoided mirrors because looking at them was a reminder of how ugly I was with my bowl cut. The popularity of Dorothy Hamill had faded and big hair was in.

“Please let me grow it out. Pleeeeeease,” I begged as my stepdad hovered over me.

“Absolutely not. You don’t deserve to look pretty. You aren’t lady like enough. You need to learn to be seen and not heard. You need to learn to sit still. THEN maybe you can grow your hair. If you want hair like a lady, then act like a lady,” said the brooding man who was now married my mom.

They had their wedding at the Presbyterian Church, my mom and I with our matching hair cuts stood in front of everyone as he vowed to take care of us. After the vows were over, I said loud enough for everyone to hear, ”Can I have a brother now?” The congregation broke out in laughter. I wasn’t afraid to open my mouth when I had something to say and my stepdad hated that about me. His goal from that very moment seemed to be to silence me anyway he could. His motto to me was, “You should not speak unless spoken to.”

My stepfather slowly took control over each aspect of our lives. It was exciting at first; we got to move into a new house that he bought. He bought us a new car with air conditioning. Before long, my mom was pregnant so I even got the brother I wanted so badly. We got a dog for Christmas. For my birthday, I got everything an Easy Bake Oven and a Fashion Plates set to create fashionable paper people. We got to go on vacations and we got to eat out a lot. All of that was so fun. It seemed nice to have someone who controlled all the parts of my mom’s life that she needed help with. We had been living off of eggs and peanut butter and now we were provided with anything and everything that we needed. It was magical for a few months. Behind the gifts and the vacations, my stepdad lusted to control everything about her and me. She gave him the reins the day she said her vows. Signing her marriage license was signing her soul over to him. The day before her wedding was the last day that my mom had any type of control over her finances, her schedule and her selfhood. She signed away all access to her money to him. She signed away her right to work when she wanted and where she wanted and she signed away her authority as a parent over me to him

My stepfather pressured my mom into his aesthetic, first by flattery and then by demand. What began as “I love your hair short,” ended as, “long hair would look dumb on you.” Early in their relationship, he would gift her new earrings, because “he knew they would look fantastic,” but later that became roars of, “You are NOT leaving the house without earrings…come on…have some decency…go put some on…NOOOOOOOOW… let’s go, because you are now making us late….geeeeeeez.” as he clapped his hands loudly and he we piled in the car.

The more that time went on, there more control my stepfather had over every aspect of our lives. If he didn’t like our clothes, he would order my mom to buy new ones. We were expected to dress only in clothes approved by him. After shopping my beloved shopping trips with my grandmother I was expected to “model clothes” for his approval. Everything that was “in style” in the mid eighties were forbidden. He made me return the jean jacket I was so excited to finally own and he made me throw away the cut off jeans I made because he felt denim was “trashy.” Of course, still forbidden and most devastating of all was long hair.

The moat between my mother and I grew into an ocean. She felt so far from me. My grandmother was the only parental figure I cared about. I would call her every day.

“Why won’t he let me grow my hair?” I would ask her on the phone, “I’m big now,” I’d say to her. She never had a good answer for me and she did everything she could to try to make it better for me, but she had no control over the fact that my stepdad was using control of my hair as a tool to emotionally abuse me.”

“You are lazy, worthless and you talk too much. Why do you think I would let you get to be cute? You think that little mouth of yours is cute? Well, keep being cute and see where it gets ya, yapping that mouth of yours. Keep being cute and stay ugly,” he snickered. “And eating the way you eat is making you a fatty too. You will never find a good man with that mouth of yours when you are grown. I’m doing the world a favor by making sure one won’t want you.”

The argument over my hair was a daily one. It had morphed form being about me taking care of it to being about control in the purest form. Anytime my stepdad needed his fix of rage and intimidation, he would take me to get my haircut. If I made a C on a test…haircut. If my brother didn’t do well in school after I helped him with his homework…haircut. If my room wasn’t perfect…haircut. If I didn’t iron everyone’s laundry perfectly…haircut. If I spoke out of place…haircut. If I stayed up too late talking to myself in my room….haircut. 

Each haircut felt like torture. Staring myself in the mirror watching the little bit of growth I had over a week or two fall to the floor and be swept with my sense of self worth.

By middle school, my friends were getting spiral perms and pressing soft waves into their hair. Puffy bangs were in style and that year my grandmother bought me a curling iron and a crimping plates kit for my birthday. I was so excited. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make the styling work with my short hair. I spent hours that summer in the bathroom experimenting with clips and my styling plates. By the end of the summer, I figured out a way to style my ear length hair that actually made me feel confident.

“Ready to start school?” my stepdad said the Saturday morning before school started.

“Yes, I think so,” I said with my crimpled hair and neon hair bands making a tiny ponytail on top.

“Ok, well, go get in the car because I have a hair appointment for you,” he said.

“Do I have to?” I asked meekly, already knowing the answer.

“What do you think?” he said, peering into my soul. He knew that I knew better than to ask that type of question.

I could see my reflection in the tinted window as we went down the road. I gulped down the tears as we pulled into Supercuts.

“Go sit,” he said and as he grabbed the “Short Hair for Ladies” book sitting by the check in counter.

My stepdad called the stylist over as I stared at myself in the mirror. I made myself completely numb so as not to burst out in tears. This was my tenth year of sporting a short bowl cut. My stepdad knew that I built up a bit more confidence in my hair with the styling tools my grandmother bought me, and he was completely intent on tearing it down. 

As I watched their reflections in the mirror behind me, my stepdad said, “This one,” and pointed to a picture on the page. I couldn’t see what the cut looked like but the stylist said to him, “Are you sure? It’s a really short cut.”

“Do it, she can’t take care of her hair so we keep it short.

The stylist tried to argue back to him saying, “This is a whole lot shorter than what she has and it requires a lot of styling and upkeep.”

“Do it,” he said rolling his eyes and walking out the salon to the dry cleaners next door.

The stylist came over and said, “Are you ready?”

“No,” I said, “And I do take care of my hair,” as if justifying myself to the hairdresser would change anything.

“I’m sorry, but he insisted,” she said as she pulled out clippers, “Put your head down.”

I felt the clippers on the nape of my neck working its way thought my hair like a lawnmower over a dewy Southern lawn. The few remaining inches of hair that I held so dear dropped to the ground all around me. I was glad that my head was down so that the stylist could not see me cry.

“It’s done,” said the stylist with the weight of finality as she removed the styling gown from around me.

I must have turned pale at that point because she began justifying the new pixie cut without me even saying a word.

“It’s like Annie Lennox!” she noted, “here is some gel for you…it will help.”

I was mortified. I wanted to become a hermit crab and live in a shell forever. Now I REALLY looked like a boy, my body was not yet changed by my budding tween hormones.

When I got home, I opened the cabinet, and pulled out the curling irons and crimping plates my grandmother bought me. With just one haircut, my stepfather removed anything that remained of my confidence and destroyed my grandmother’s token of kindness to try to makes things more bearable for me.

The first day of school that year was a nightmare. I arrived at the bus stop and immediately the boys started teasing me.

“HAHA, I have more hair that YOU now,” said Brandon.

“You are disgusting,” said Dwight.

Day after day, I sat alone at the lunch table. When I got home from school, I relentlessly begged my mom to let me grow my hair back out. She would inevitably rat me out to my stepfather, and I’d be taken to get my hair cut again. This scene played out on repeat. My stepdad reveled in the shame and abuse I experienced. He hardly had to say anything because he knew that my haircut ensured I was tortured day after day at school and on the bus.

“But remember you don’t take care of it and it looks gross and stringy when its long.” My mom said as we stood in the kitchen.”

“Mom, seriously? Maybe when I was little, but I’m twelve and now my hair is even shorter!  I hardly have any hair at all! I have all of these cool styling tools and I can’t even use any of them!  Come on!? This is so unfair.”

“Life isn’t fair…Try harder,” she said as she walked to her room apply her make up for the birthday party she was working. I cried and pleaded to her as she went form begin a depressed shell of a mother to her clown persona. Standing before me with her clown wig, full costume and make up. She smile painted on her face sickened me. She never wanted to be my mother, I thought. She preferred to prance around in disguise and make other kids laugh than to protect me. She hid her motherhood with jest and costume. I didn’t want to be left alone with my stepdad, yet every weekend, my mother left the house as a different person, a happier person that the woman I witnessed crumpled up in her bed day after day. The ocean between us was a galaxy away. I didn’t even want to be close to her anymore. A lifetime of rejection and fending for myself against the man my mother married had created a barriers in my heart that I didn’t even care to remove. I was fine to leave the walls there. I was happy to build them up higher.

My stepdad had me do the house chores all day as per usual. Vacuuming my room, I looked at myself in the big mirror on my wall. Tears ran down my cheeks as I looked at my hair. It wasn’t a short girl haircut this time, it was a boy cut. Not only was the hair really short, but all the sun kissed blond tips of my hair were gone. I was left with a dishwater military cut. I was devastated. I wanted to jump out of my body and be someone else. I was exhausted of living with someone who knew how to take away from me every bit of joy I created in life. I was relieved that the vacuum covered up the sound of crying. As I waited for my stepdad to come in and check my work, I tried to compose myself.

He walked around me and then around the rooms and came back.

“Not good enough,” he said and walked away.

This process is I was accustomed to. My stepdad would not approve my work, but he would also not tell me what was wrong with it. The first couple of times he did his checks, I might have been able to find a spot to clean again. However as the day went on, the house was clean and I had no idea what could possibly be wrong.

“Pleeeeease tell me, please,” I would beg.

“You should KNOW,” he sneered at me. I could see that he loved watching my distress and he loved that he was taking away my free time. He loved it all.  I could see how much he was enjoying every second. His eyes mirrored back to me his true maliciousness. “TRY HARDER!! YOU ARE LAZY!” He roared with a twinkle in his eye.

I cleaned all day and all night. When my mom got home from clowning, they went out to eat. I could finally be at peace in my room. I walked into the room and the huge wall mirror was there staring back at me…again. There was no escape as to whay my stepfather had done to me by this haircut. I was looked like a boy more than ever when all I wanted was to look like a girl with puffy bangs and neon scrunchies. I couldn’t stand the sight of myself. I buried my nose into books and blasted music to escape. One day I’ll write about this, I thought.

The teasing at school and on the bus was relentless. My sweet friends helped me as much as they could by bringing make up on the bus for me to wear and wipe pads so I could take I off before I got home. They knew how upset I was about my hair. They saw me being made fun of and teased that I looked like a boy. Of course, my best friends didn’t care about my hair. They knew how I felt about it. I told them everything, and they got it. Some of my friends had moms who didn’t let them cut their hair. Some of them had dad’s who insisted they dress a certain way much like my stepdad. In the conservative South of the eighties, it was culturally accepted that fathers had reign over their daughters. There wasn’t much of an escape from the coded rules Southern Belles were expected to follow. My stepdad like many malignant powerful Southern dads used the control of my hair to abuse me, to make me suffer under his power. Control over my body including my hair was the ultimate assertion of power for my stepdad. Later when I went through my “religious phase,” the praise of long hair and its association with purity, piety and modesty was equally disturbing. That experience showed me a different world of social control of women’s appearances and behavior.  

The battle over my hair lasted until I moved into my grandmother’s house in high school. For the first time in my life, I had control over how I wanted my hair. I was able to grow it and fix it any way I wanted. When my mother would come to visit, she would chime in, ‘I still like your hair better short,” or she would say “You should wear your hair back, you look so much better without all of that hair in your face.” After all of the battles with my hair, the deep backhanded insults were oil on the flame. Instead of letting me have the moment and letting me love my hair, my mother always made some sort of backhanded comment. She justified forcing me to wear a cut she knew I hated and that got me bullied. My mother tried to keep my hair under the strict grasp of my stepfather far beyond the length of his reach. I already strayed too far away for either of them to keep me bound by their expectations of my womanhood. My grandmother fostered my growth and let me express myself in anyway I chose. Once I was gifted the space for my confidence to grow, I was never going to look back at the twelve year old girl that once stared back at me from the wall mirror.

My mother’s hair short and kept is the same to this day. A pawn of my stepfathers’ games is her legacy. Her hair is a visual reminder of his control over her. She carries her weighted masks, moving though life both as a clown and a puppet. One may argue that controlling a child’s hair isn’t abusive and sure, maybe that is the case for some. For me, haircuts were used as a weapon of torture. The verbal lashes and the humiliation that came with them were intentionally aimed at tearing me apart. Each hair that was cut was a cut on my spirit and self worth. The destruction of the demands placed on controlling women’s hair, dress, appearance and bodies is a fight that generations of girls continue to endure. The restrictive expectations placed on women are in and of themselves a form of sanctioned abuse, similar (and in conjunction) to the church’s expectations of modesty.

I recognize that some women have never been allowed to have short hair and feel empowered in cutting theirs. Snipping the strands of cultural expectations placed upon us as women is a weighted catharsis represented by films like GI Jane and A Long Kiss Goodnight or the fabulously powerful Express Yourself Madonna. New and creative representations of fluidity and ambiguity placed as a new version feminine possibility is a gift modern women give to one another. Each newly accepted attribute that is born of women’s creative power and rebellious soul is a treasure standing out in the muck of antquitous expectations.

As I brush though my hair, I build on my identity. As I sit in a salon seat and watch the stylist create the look I asked for, I build my sense of self worth. As I grow my hair, I grow my spirit. As I cleanse my hair, I wash away my past. As I accept the silver in my hair, I accept the woman I am to become. As I manage my bad hair days, I build my self-fortitude. As I see myself in the mirror each day, I reflect back my strength. As I go out into the world with an identity I molded and pruned like a precious bonsai tree, I hope to shine back to the people I encounter these attributes with acceptance and compassion.

As children we are taught that its who we are inside that matters. Yet as a child, I was taught to hide everything unique or different or special about myself. My stepfather showed me that it wasn’t who I was inside that mattered. All that mattered to him was the blind and unquestioning obedience. He still demands obedience as overseer of women in his new cultish Christian non profit, but he can’t demand it of me anymore. Like the sudden chop of my hair, I cut him and my mom out of my life for my own protection, for my own spirit and for my own future. It was as painful to have to walk away from them even as toxic as they were, because we all want to feel loved by our parents. Just as it took me years to grow my hair out from that last boy cut, it has taken yeas for me to heal from the gut wrenching pain they caused me beyond the time I lived with them. I assumed incorrectly that moving out of their house would end their malignancy. I thought that limited contact would be enough of a barrier to encompass my heart with protection. But as time went on, they only got worse.

Time as it turned our does not heal all wounds; it can caused some to fester and grow. At first it hurt like hell to remove myself completely from their lives but as they tried to control me AND my children from afar, I knew it was the only answer. Complete separation and disposal of my parents from my life now feels liberating and like an undoing of their disposal of me. I know now that I don’t have to fear rejection because I only surround myself with people that accept me for who I am. Parents that reject their children deserve to be rejected. Estrangement is a sad state, but it’s the only state that someone can thrive in if they were in a toxic or abusive relationship no matter the tool. My boy cut was a mask they forced me to wear. Obedience to ridiculous and ever changing expectations was a way to scapegoat me. Hair was used as a weapon. Instead of picking up a weapon to aim back at them; instead of participating in the endless cycle of defending myself against them, I ghosted. As I grew my spirit unbound by their diseased personas and as I grow my hair, I heal the parts of my heart they used against me. I allow myself to make peace with the past and accept with excitement that I have full control of my future. When I look at myself in the mirror each morning, when I look at my hair I see strength; I see power; I see self control; I see creativity; and I see the woman I always wanted to be…present and every growing and proud.