Before the blog I was blond, naturally.

I can remember hating my hair. It was stick straight, woefully trapped somewhere between blonde and ugly, and impossible to keep up. For years I was a tow head, but puberty hit me a top the head with bottle of hair dye, and my hair started to get nasty. Dishwater is not an affectionate, nor a very descriptive term, if you think about it… my dish water never looks like fine, medium blonde hair that needs a good washing…

I’m not sure what led my Mom to dye my hair at the age of 12. I remember the box, it had a pretty girl with big eyes, and a bright smile shaking out a short mane of beautiful golden locks. It stank, and itched, and I wasn’t allowed to look into the mirror until after my hair was cut into a short page boy, blow dried, and fluffed around my face. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. My hair didn’t look anything like the woman’s on the box. It had reacted to the dye and turned a fabulous shade of strawberry blonde that made my eyes glow, and my skin look flawless.

Since I was just starting to struggle with pimples and blemishes, flawless was a good thing. The hair do was so easy to keep up, I never had to do anything with it… I had no curl at the point in time… so it laid flat and smooth with a slight bounce at the end, and when I wore green my eyes went from the color of dried feces to a rich, mossy green brown. At that time I was attending a school that was 98% black, and 2% white, and let me tell you… I suddenly stood out more than I ever had before. It was the first time I realized I could have some sort of power over boys.

The first time I went to school with my new hair classmates I’d never spoken to before would walk over and stroke their dark fingers through my glossy hair and tug playfully, their voices light, teasing… friendly, as they called me Goldilocks. I wore my hair like this until I was about 15. Most people never even questioned it. We moved later that year to Washington, where no one had ever seen my mousy hair… and for all they knew, I’d been born with that glorious golden red hair. And then puberty changed it’s mind, and my hair started to frizz, and curl… and darken.

It suddenly became to expensive to keep my roots touched up, and my hair grew out. Brown, wavy, and unmanageable. It still wouldn’t stay in a clip, but suddenly I need hair products, and a different sort of brush, and new make-up… because my skin tone looked completely different with that new hair. It was awful. I’d cut it off short, hoping to make things better, and never seemed to realize the shorter my hair was, the curlier it was, and the thicker it grew in. Of course, I couldn’t have a pretty shade of brown hair, it was still mousy, on the dull side… and trapped somewhere between light, and dark… so I dyed it again. I’d pick out a lovely shade of brown, and when I blow dried my hair I almost cried. It was red.

Glossy, almost not red, red hair… and I decided to go with it. I wore my hair like this for a while and just for a change once in a while I’d lighten it… but could never quite attain that brilliant shade of strawberry again. I gave up and embraced the brown, and let hair grow out. Then I started to get gray hair. At 17 I yanked out my first bristly, curly little hair, and cried. I didn’t have any luck at avoiding premature gray. My father was gray, my mother was gray, I had an uncle who’d been heavily gray by 13, and my Momo already had a full head of white hair.

The gray hair grew worse, and I went back to the bottle. I even went to the stylist, and had my hair done professionally, and always… I’d come out with something slightly red. I wanted so desperately to have brown hair, plain, simple… but it’s never worked. So I either embrace my inner temper (oh, who are we kidding… I do more than embrace my temper, I dance with it) or deal with the gray. I’m seriously considering a trip to the stylist in a few weeks, and having it chopped off back to my chin (I haven’t had a cut in a year!)… and getting the gray covered. There was a brief consideration… I wanted to try and get that strawberry blond again, but I decided against it. I’m hoping to go back to something like this…

It curls better the shorter it is, and it’s nice to be able to scrunch and go… most days I just French braid it and forget about it. It is nice to have some length, but I’m overly fond of it anymore. What do you think?