Six Years Later and I Still Feel the Same

I wrote this post a year or two ago, came across it, came across some of the pictures I was talking about and decided to repost it here. 

 

It’s funny how simple images can suddenly make me recall things I had long forgotten. Things I thought I was over. Things I am over. 

I’m over them, right? 

All those bad experiences they made me who I am today, for better or worse. Hadn’t I long accepted that? 

It’s just an image after all, it can’t hurt me. But then why am I feeling this way? Like I can’t breathe. Like the tightness in my chest is going to squeeze my heart until it stops. Like I want to cry and run away and cease to be. Like its freshman year of high school all over again and my world is crashing around me and I’m a walking cliche eating in the bathroom alone being shunned by my ex friends like I’m a pariah. 

How can one little image do that to me? Hadn’t I long ago accepted that what happened was for the better? I met my best friends and went on to do awesome things because of that? Every tear, every lonely moment, every little cut or contemplated suicide made me stronger or whatever it is that I say to make me feel okay about my shittier moments in life. 

Maybe its because I’m sleep deprived and its late. That’s why a picture of her face set me off.

I don’t know.

I wonder if she ever thinks about me. About what happened. I wonder how she remembers it. Mostly I’ll retell it as a joke in passing. “My Mean Girls moment, hahaha, yeah, I totally ate in a bathroom stall once. So funny. ” 

But I guess it’s not funny. Not really. And I guess I’m not over it. Or maybe I’m just damaged goods.

The End of an (H)era (this post is about hair, get it?)

I can obsessively talk (and brag) about my hair. Hell, I’m writing a post about my hair right now. It’s my pride and joy. It’s my “pretty” thing. And recently my therapist gave it the phrase “safety blanket”. So why the hell did I cut it all off?

Let’s start at the beginning. My hair didn’t really start growing until I was three years old. I was a mostly bald little baby that could have maybe been mistaken for a boy had it not been for the gold stud earrings. My mom is Mexican and it’s a very Mexican thing to get a baby girl’s ears pierced as early as possible after she’s born. And once my hair started to grow, that shit fucking grew. My mom kept me in straight across bangs until fifth grade. Sometimes she liked to trim them herself to save money. You can tell when she did because in pictures they’re crooked and uneven and janky as hell. I also had all of that long thick mess pulled into a high ponytail that she braided. Along with my chunkiness and round as a circle face, the look wasn’t my favorite. If I could destroy my fourth grade school portrait, I would.

And then fifth grade came along. I joined the sports teams because I saw the Disney Channel original movie Double Teamed and really wanted to be sporty. I had my one and only growth spurt. I got glasses. So I cut my hair off. My hair that had gone down to my butt was suddenly shoulder length and I wore it down or in a ponytail. (Also hasta la vista bangs.) Looking back, this was also not the greatest look. I had those “bendable” wire frames and the cut was kind of not the most flattering. But I was taller and thinner-ish (for me, still fat compared to the other girls) so it didn’t really matter. We were still young and dumb anyways.

And then in 7th grade I got layers for the first time. I thought they were magical. Looking back, they were the shittiest layers I’ve had but I loved them. My hair was so much lighter! So much better than that one length bonanza! I should mention my hair is thick as hell and I have way too much of it on my head. Its a combination of thick Mexican hair and silky smooth Asian hair. (Thanks mixed race genes!) So yeah, these layers were a godsend then eventually grew out really awesome for my 8th grade graduation pictures. As soon as I got out of that catholic private school prison I dyed the tips of my hair red because I was super edgy, naturally. But I was going to an even stricter all girls catholic high school so at the end of summer, chop chop goes the ends. But my hair is still long.

And then came the end of freshmen year when I went to a salon feelings particularly impulsive and asked for a bob. Oh my my, I spent the rest of high school growing it out. I did try bang a couple times, side swept bangs, Zooey Deschanel bangs, they grew out really fast and I never bothered trying to maintain them. By my junior year my hair was long again and by senior year it was god damn near perfect. That was people’s favorite physical thing to compliment me on. If you haven’t really gotten the picture, I’ve been fat my whole life. Sure there was my smile and my flawless complexion, but it was my hair that was the “prettiest” thing. After all, you can’t compliment a fat girl on her body. No one says “I wish I had your thighs” or “You’re so lucky you can wear sleeveless shirts, you have such nice arms”. So you say things like “I wish I had your hair”. I craved any sort of lusting after something that belonged to my body so I was more than happy with that. All I wanted was hair compliments. I took that to college with me.

I had all intention of exercising and eating right the summer before college, which happened to coincide with Katy Perry’s “California Gurlz” being a chart topper. Suddenly the fact that I was from California, LA in particular, seemed like a big deal to me. I was going to go to college in Chicago, people had expectations. Tall, tan, fit. Here I was, short, awkwardly colored and fat. Good intention be damned. I didn’t become tan or fit in three short months. (I’ve never hoped to get taller, I’m not an idiot.)

Lucky for me I continued to get by on my sarcasm and damn fine looking hair. It remains my most enviable physical trait and I pick up the nasty habit of actually talking about my hair to people (I try very hard to make it sound like self deprecating humor, I think I often fail). At the end of my sophomore year my friend and I decide to streak our hair. She was gonna throw in a red streak and I wanted a blonde streak. Her’s turns out amazing mine…not so much. Even though I double bleached the shit out of my one inch strand its more of a brassy orange than blonde. Yet, I still have some  damn nice hair.

I guess I can also add that my hair is on the straight side. It’s never liked staying curled but it does hold some amazing beachy waves. After I shower I’d put it up in a bun and after it dried I’d let it fall down and BAM, my friends gave me the nickname of slut hair. At least, when it was long.

Junior year, my life goes to absolute shit. My hair has become something that shelters me but I also take out all my impulsive needs on it. In the fall I went through the worst depression I had gone through and in a fit of rage chopped off the front of my hair into something bang-like. My friend did her best to fix it. We really pulled that shit off, they looked great. By now my hair was just hanging above my butt in long cascading layers. And then I did my stint in the psych ward after I tried to kill myself. Let me tell you, psych wards will murder your hair. On the other hand, between the ward, new medications and not being able to stomach any food I lost 20 pounds. But I also had to cut six inches off my hair because of all the damage. I was okay with it. Skinnier me always means I can be okay with  shorter hair. Long hair was what I needed to hide behind. It could cover imperfections if I wore a tank top, hide my cleavage in a too revealing top. It gave people something to notice since my body isn’t what’s considered attractive.

And then I left school and came home. The weight stayed off for a while and my hair grew back. And then slowly with the new year it crept back up on me more and more.  It shot past where I was before the psych ward and into territory I thought I would never ever be in. So now what did I have left? I was fatter than I ever thought I would ever be in my life, my mental state was a steaming pile of shit and my life was in ruins. All I really had going for me was that I still had really fucking pretty hair. Call me vain. Call me an idiot. But in the shittiest of times you look for even the tiniest thing, and that was my tiny thing.

I felt like crap and looked like crap and have never felt more unattractive. But hey, everyone still complimented and wanted my hair. They may not want my body or my personality anymore but I had something. And then, I few weeks ago, I cut it. So I didn’t technically cut it all off, but to me, it feels like I did. It goes just past my shoulders now.

There is no more hair for me to hide behind. I don’t regret it per se, I don’t hate it. I just feel lost. What do people have to envy about me now? What would make a potential love interest look twice? I can’t show off my sparkling personality if I can’t even get anyone to want to even talk to me.

If you’re still reading this at this point, thank you. This is more than I got to tell my therapist, to say the least. She just told me I lost my safety blanket, my hair looks fine and then decided to use that topic to drill my about my weight issues. (And let me just add in that having a skinny person, therapist or not, talk to you about your weight and things related to it, is never ever fucking fun.)