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| I mean, my new hair looks good, right? |
But as I started to dredge up all those choice quotes, I
realized something. This isn’t funny at
all. WTF were you thinking?
So today, I thought I’d tell a more positive kind of story.
One about a relationship in which the two parties have actually worked through
their issues and made a spectacular turnaround even when things looked grim.
It’s a story about me and my hair.
The two of you who’ve been reading this blog over the last
couple months know that when I went to Oaxaca back in February, it was like a
honeymoon for the two of us. The warm, dry climate of Oaxaca did wonders for my
relationship with my har. It was all roses and champagne and falling in love all
over.
No time to blow dry? Doesn’t matter! Hair looks great in a
ponytail!
Only five minutes to blow dry? Hair looks sleek and
volumized anyway!
But when we came back to Puebla after a too-short week,
things quickly went downhill again. My once ebullient hair positively drooped.
The gray proliferated faster than normal. No amount of product or careful
blow-drying could give it that Oaxaca dazzle. On top of that, my jeans were way
to f*cking tight.
It was a dark time for a couple weeks there. It looked as if
we weren’t going to make it. I tried to remind myself how lucky I was just to have hair (and pants to wear). A few
years back, I saw a wrenching documentary called Mondays at Racine, about a
salon that opens its door for free to cancer patients. And it chronicled, in
part, how devastating it was for these women to lose their hair.
So why couldn’t I just
be grateful?! But that kind of thinking never works. It just makes you feel
worse about yourself because you know you’ll probably lose your hair to cancer
one day too and then you’ll hate your former self for being so spoiled and
ungrateful to have a head of full – if slightly droopy – hair. Yet it doesn’t
make you appreciate your hair any more in the moment.
Of course, it’s not easy to break up with your own hair. But
we were definitely heading that way. Until things changed. I went to the salon
one day with very little hope for any miracle. Except, that of course, they’d
get rid of the gray and I could forget for a while that I was actually kind of
old.
But two other things happened at the salon. One, I showed
them a picture of how I wanted my bangs cut. Because my bangs NEVER turn out
how I want them to.
Two, they parted my hair on the Other. Side.
I tried to protest this.
“I always part my hair on this side,” I said, or rather said
with gestures, because I have no idea how to say the word “part” in Spanish.
Then I got a mini-lecture about how you should part your
hair on a different side every day so it doesn’t get “stuck”. Then I gave up
and watched skeptically as they styled it with the part on the other side and
the new bangs. And…
Well, your hair always looks good the day you go to the
salon.
The next day I tried parting it on the usual side. Eh. Then I parted it on the new side.
And what do you know, it looked good. The
new bangs were in my face a little but that’s kind of sexy, right?
It might have been that the climate in Puebla changed just a
bit too at that moment. Suddenly there weren’t so many flyaways in my hair
either. It looked sleeker. Plus, it was getting longer after I’d chopped off a
bit too much the last time.
And though it took a few days to dawn on me, I realized that
I was starting to look forward to blow-drying my hair now instead of dreading
it. That I could actually count on my hair to look good instead of just waiting
for it to disappoint me every single day. (Which is a feeling I know all too
well from my marriage, thank you very much.)
Since that day almost a month ago, things have been steadily
improved between us. In any long relationship, there are ups and downs. But in
the healthy relationships, things generally get better again instead of staying
mired in the bad. You work through stuff and find your footing once more.
And, like your hair stylist says, you mix things up so you
don’t get “stuck.”
Which is, of course, a lot easier said than done with relationships.
But
at least one of my important relationships has been salvaged.
