Blonde

I colored my hair this morning.  I mean, I, personally, colored my own hair.  With dye out of a box.  That hasn’t happened since I was in high school.  It looks awful.  In my defense, I did by the most expensive home color treatment at Ulta.  But let’s be honest.  It’s still an in house dye job.  Those never turn out like you want.  Also, I’m not blond anymore.  I didn’t realize how much blond had become part of my identity, until I looked in the mirror and saw…well, something other than blonde.  I look mousey.  I look shy.  I look…well to be quite honest, cheap.  I look cheap. 

Now, just to be clear, I am not now, nor have I ever been a natural blonde.  In fact, blonde is a relatively new physical attribute for me.  About five years ago, I took a gamble when my stylist, and dear friend, said “maybe you should lighten up a little?” She may have been talking about my mood, but I took it as more as a suggestion for a style change.   So, I did.  Why not, right?  It was the dead of winter in Alaska.  If anyone needed to “lighten up,” it was me.  Then every six weeks to eight weeks after that, I found myself in Diana’s chair.  Foils in my hair, philosophizing about life and speculating about the small town scandals.   It seemed that the “style change” Diana had suggested, turned into a LIFEstyle change.  I went to the salon every other month.  I made new friends.  People responded differently to me.  The blond me was a hit.  My stock went up and my status increased.  Maybe they were right, maybe blondes do have more fun. 

Then I moved back to California.  I was terrified to look for a new Diana.  I eventually found a girl who I connected with and could make me look (and feel) better than I ever had before.   I always hugged Chrysta and whispered in her ear “no man can ever make me feel as good as you make me feel.”  Because when I stood up from Chrysta’s chair, I was a different person.  I was blonde. And beautiful.  And fulfilled.  Then, back in the spring, Chrysta skipped town and moved to Vegas with some hustler.  My heart was broken.  How could she just leave?  Why didn’t’ she call?  It was the worst breakup ever.  Not only had I lost the girl who did my hair, I lost my blonde.  In protest of Chrysta’s departure, and at the mercy of my checking account, I stopped getting my hair done.  No more salon.  No more therapy.  No more blonde.  Until today.  When, after many snide comments about how I wasn’t taking care of myself, I was finally forced to color my own hair.  With store bought solution.  Now that’s humbling.  Shallow, maybe.  But most definitely humbling. 

As I was doing my best to cover the unsightly grays and even out the color discrepancy between blond and auburn, I thought about how we have become overwhelmingly consumed with being what we are not.  In my case, it’s being blonde.  Five years ago, I wasn’t blonde and I didn’t know the difference.  But after I learned the difference, I dedicated a lot of myself, and my income, to making blonde part of my identity.  I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only person to ever work really hard at being something I’m not.  I know people.  I read books.  I visit social media every day.  I know that most of us are trying to be something we are not.  I can see, clearly, that many of us are trying to convince others that we are something different than what we are.  All the posts about being in love your soul mate.  All the praising your perfect children.  All the pictures of the perfect Christmas trees and family dinners.  All of the shit you want to believe about yourself, and more importantly, that you want others to believe about you.  In all fairness, I’m not saying that some people aren’t living a fucking fairytale.  Some are.  If you are one of those, good on you.  But if you are broadcasting your perfect existence to the masses, you are either bragging or your lying.  It’s that simple. 

I guess we all need to feel fulfilled.  I don’t judge anyone for needing attention.  I am what my friends affectionately refer to as an “attention whore.” If I weren’t, I wouldn’t share all of my most intimate thoughts on the internet.  So,  I don’t fault anyone for trying to be something they are not.  I do it every day.  The blonde hair.  The skirts.  The shoes.  The terrifyingly expensive makeup to conceal the red and the freckles and the blemishes.  The face I put on is not even close to being an accurate likeness of who I actually am.  In fact, I walked past my bedroom mirror just the other morning.  I saw something out of the corner of my eye that startled me.  It wasn’t pleasant.  In fact, it was horrifying.  Turned out, it was my reflection.  Hair all disheveled.  Mascara running down my cheek.  A GIANT zit glaring back at me.  Oh sweet baby Jesus.   After I recovered from the dismay of seeing my own reflection first thing in the morning, I had an epiphany “Maybe this is why you can’t keep a man in your bed more than one night.”  Then I thought about all the men who had made an appearance in my bed in recent memory, and suddenly I was grateful for the early morning revelation.  That image probably saved me from a miserable conformist and subservient future with a man who has a hard time spelling his own name.   

Sorry.  I lost focus for a minute.  But I think it’s actually all very relevant.  We ALL try to be something we are not.  We all want people to think we are doing better than we actually are.  To try to be more is human, to actually do more is really fucking hard.  Like being blonde, that was really easy.  I was always “the blonde at the…” that became part of my identity.  I had a girl who did my hair.  I called her “my girl.”  She knew me.  She knew my stories.  She made me pretty.  She made me ignore the early morning image of myself that I never wanted to see.  She changed the way other people treated me.  But now, Chrysta is gone.  She can’t work her chemical magic anymore.  I guess that’s OK since I can’t afford it, anyway.  But now that the façade is over, I have to reinvent myself.  Again.  I think this time I’m just going to be honest about who I am. 

-Inner Peas