When placed under any degree of stress, uncertainty, fear, or direct threat of indefinite disruption to my overall quality of life, my knee-jerk reactive coping strategy is to cut my hair. Most often, it’s a subtle change by way of some new fringe above my brow. Bangs don’t feel quite so irrational or dramatic as, say, going full-on G.I. Jane and buzzing off your entire head of hair. Bangs don’t feel as intimidating as deciding that, of course, I will look amazing when my hair is colored a shade so clearly far off from anything nature ever intended it to be but fuck it! The world is ending so why the hell not!!!
After the birth of both of my girls, I chopped off no less than six inches of my hair. Some would think making a bad decision twice would be enough to know better the next time but not indulging in old habits would be too easy. After Knox was born, I really felt the need to take it up a notch with the dedication to giving zero fucks. Also, it’s amazing how misery and chronic exhaustion allow delusion to trump the rationale and reason your loved ones are not so subtly trying to persuade you with.
Anyway, Knox was six weeks old and I was in the thick of that postpartum rut so many women can identify with. Nothing fit, my hair was falling out in clumps, I was always sweaty, smelled like curry, and while continued to leak from various orifices, my precious baby boy never stopped fucking crying. Unable to convince the tyrant to politely shut the fuck up, I picked an easier opponent and took on the job of convincing myself that, more than sleep or a babysitter or even a shower, what I really needed was to ask a stylist I’d never previously gone to to kindly chop off nearly twelve inches of my hair with a razor. In the time it takes to read a single gossip magazine, my hair was brutally mowed down by her relentless pruning. When she excitedly spun me around to admire my own reflection, I only saw a mortified, mutilated, butt-ass ugly hair cut atop my dome, settling just above my rounder-than-normal cheeks thanks to the thirty pounds I’d yet to lose from pregnancy. I’m no authority on hair seeing as how I just bought my first hair brush two months ago but I feel fairly confident when I say that the hair I saw in that mirror that day was the exact opposite of good hair.
I fought my heavily hormonally-influenced emotions until I got out of the salon and into my car. As I glanced at the three car seats lined up behind me, I sobbed. And this was no single tear rolling down my cheek situation. No way. This was the ugly cries of all ugly cries the entire two mile drive home and another twelve minutes while parked in the garage as I scrambled to figure out a way I could go into the house and nobody would notice mom’s bad choice du jour. With my tail tucked firmly between my legs, I couldn’t even look at Joe as I opened the back door. Like a tween, I made him promise me that he wouldn’t acknowledge what I’d done verbally, going so far as to threaten him with his own life if he so much as even smirked. Fortunately, I didn’t marry an asshole and he took mercy on me so I didn’t have to kill him that night. Thanks to my exceptionally fragile postpartum ego being on full display, he even tried to lie and tell me that I looked beautiful— “even if my hair looked like a blind four year old cut it.”
I laughed. We laughed. And, luckily, my hair grew back though the process proved to be a real pain in the ass, reminding me why I never should have cut my hair to begin with. And yet, here I am. Itching to get bangs or cut off a half foot again because clearly I am an invested, stubborn emotional cutter and life feels as complicated as ever. Everyone copes differently and all are valid. Some people go for a run or obsessively clean and organize their pantry while others, like myself, intentionally sabotage their entire physical appearance all in the name of a dopamine hit only to get punched in the gut with the inevitable rush of regret.
In times of uncertainty and fear, I find it rather reassuring to know that I remain consistently dedicated to making bad decisions.
It’ll grow back. It, like life, always finds its’ way back.