Should I get my hair cut?

No really, should I?

I'm torn. I can't decide if it's worth it to keep growing this tangled brown mess out until I can sit on it, or perhaps tie it in knots. It seems to be tying itself in knots fairly well right now, I won't need to grow it any longer for that, but. But. But I kinda like it long, it seems luxurious, shiny, it distracts.

The strands of hair that I bleached and dyed a brilliant intense purple-blue still exist, but they're now a tired, overly shiny pink-mauve. It still looks interesting, but tired. I used an all-over rinse a couple weeks ago, a burgundy tint that was just perfect, and just washed out. Less than 18 shampoos, should I ask for my money back?

I'm not always obsessed with my hair. In high school, it was practically all I thought of. I worried that it was too frizzy, and I spent several minutes each day brushing through it, moving the brush in a practiced swoop so that my hair was trained to curl under at the ends. At the cheap-ass salons I learned to use the term, "blunt cut," because anything layered would look like hell after one shampoo.

I'm not always obsessed with myself, for that matter. For the past three years I've been avoiding my corporeal self, looking askance in the mirror, not wanting to see the ghost of pain and anger I still feel, like a damp ring on wood left behind by a cold, damp glass. I know, without looking, that I am tired, I look tired, my body is less shapely, more adult. I am standing a little less certainly. My smile is tinged with irritation, my eyes are guarded. My body language, oddly enough, is wide open. I am nothing if not receptive to what's happening around me. It's most likely the city life.

Sometime in the last year or so I went through a painful thawing. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I can't decide which, I also encountered several other people's thawings: revelations, comings-out, secrets revealed, courses taken, the winds of the sea tossing salt water into a froth. I was but one of the many ships out there. The changing currents woke me up, as if out of a cryogenic hibernation. I began to inhabit my body again.

On a really deep level, I am horrified to wake up in this body. The flesh is not nearly so firm as it was in college, my feet are a permanent wreck from three years of standing at a retail job. I see the beginnings of crow's feet. Don't talk to me about grey hair. Just don't. Oh, and my hair, rumply wavy now, since I barely care more than to twist it up on my head, let it fall and air dry into semi-curls. I take the time to dye it purple, midnight blue, a few select strands, enough to distract.

I've woken up from a soundless, sweetless dream. I have landed here, in the city's summer tide, creativity is unleashed behind my eyes. I try to look in the mirror, find me. I find it easier to stand straight and tall (as tall as 5'3" will allow.) I still don't know whether to cut my hair or not.

I live in a little apartment, too little for all my stuff. I share this space with Scott, and his greatest virtue is his ability to make room for me, no matter what. He has waited for breathing space, and now, after so long, I am willing to give it to him. I've started cleaning up my act, for real, and I am finding the perspective that comes after years of lugging my memories on my back like starving bairns.

Welcome to Glitter. I don't profess to know my anger's end, but the windows are open, the air is moving, the compass needle's become unstuck. I am once again happily mixing my metaphors.

Read the glitter abouts of the past: