Still a Breck Girl, in spite of myself.

 Friend, forgive me, for I have procrastinated.

It has been 3 years, 10 months, and 2 weeks since my last blog post.

And why am I finally here? 

I'm here to talk about my hair.

Indirectly. But ultimately.

I just got out of the shower, and my hair is still wet. We keep scissors specifically for hair in the bathroom, since my son and I do our own trimming. 

A few of you may guess where this is heading.

You'd be wrong. Mostly.

I didn't do it.

But I've been thinking about it. Bangs are always a good idea, right?

The last few years have been rough. Surviving since I closed the store has been ... and can only be described as barely. I don't regret the store at all; I know how close I came to actually making it. But, yes, I have had to fight the feeling of being a failure, and to some extent that has caused me to hide somewhat. Yes, I've been working every day, but even that doesn't account for how little I've reached out to anyone. Closing my original Facebook account a year ago wasn't caused by this, but a residual effect of being off of Facebook was a feeling of gratitude that I wasn't being seen.

Which brings me back to my hair. Aside from my disastrous cut of 2017, all of my other hair tragedies have been self-inflicted. The greatest hair stylist Michael Anthony, the random stylist my aunt took me to in 1982 who repeatedly hit my head with a brush while yelling about the terrible effects of combining home perms and Sun-In, and the entire Mulcahey Middle School class of 1981  can bear witness to that fact.

One year for Halloween I wanted to have black hair to go with my costume. I didn't want to wear a wig, and the only box of hair colorant I found was permanent. It looked horrible (after Halloween), and I still took a month or two before I tried to correct it, because even though I got startled by my reflection every time I looked in the mirror, I still appreciated the change.

And that was the crux. The change. 

More than that, it was the control over the change. I learned that whenever I felt things were out of my control, I would mess with my hair. And I would appreciate it - even if I hated what I did, because it was something I could say that I was in control of. 

(Of course, my 'fix' for the black hair was to purchase a box of color remover, and because I was impatient and wanted to do other things while my hair was processing, I put my chemical-soaking hair up in a messy bun with a scrunchie, which resulted in an unusual vertical striped effect when I took it down.)

(But *I* did that to myself. I wasn't a victim. An idiot, maybe, but I was in control, for better or worse.)

A few days ago I started considering bangs. I knew then where my head was at - and deliberately delayed washing my hair for 3 days. 

Don't judge me; if I'd given in you all would be listening to me whine about making the wrong decision, now that I'm back on Facebook and relatively visible again.

So, I'm sitting at the computer, hair still dripping - but intact. And now, instead of scaring myself every time I look in the mirror, when I see my reflection it will still look like nothing's changed, but I will know it has for that reason - because I didn't mess with my hair. I'll get through this, hell or high water, and no bangs.