Having spent something like 14 hours out of 30 on a long distance coach, I had a fair amount of time to cogitate, along with trying to sleep, something I managed far better on the homebound journey when generally 'spentness' meant I actually slept through a couple of stops!
I found myself wondering why it was that I have had such a love-hate relationship with my hair for the past four years or so (having had no hair and then fun, wild hair for almost that years before that) and I realised it was all about choice and expectations.
Yesterday at my Uncle's funeral, the husband of one of my cousins (who I last saw about 20 years ago) observed that, "you were always the one with gorgeous hair down to here" (pointing to his waist). And I was. And it was such a surprise to be told that someone had considered it gorgeous, because all through school, and most of my life since, I have fought off peer pressure to get it chopped or permed or coloured or whatever.
What struck me was that the hair cut I have just had done, which I love and is surprisingly flexible (I can be a funky, spikey pixie, or a sleek, smooth pixie, or a bit-of-each pixie), is the first active choice I have made about my hair since September 2010. And that's a very long time.
When I had it cut short pre-chemo in 2010 there was no choice, and no matter how good it looked (and it was a perfectly nice cut) I wasn't going to love it.
When I had the first, ostensibly chosen, cut at the start of 2012, the hairdresser out of kindness, told me what he suggested, and so a very short bob emerged and, with some variation in length and tweaks, that has continued until now. Every visit to the hairdresser has been a major stress event, because I haven't known what I wanted or had the courage to challenge the status quo. My hairdresser is lovely, really kind and really aware of my foibles, it's not his fault, but it has become a hugely disempowering viscious circle.
So it was that I let my hair grow a bit longer and, with his guidance, tried to see if I could, one last time, grow it to a length that would allow me choices in how I styled it. And it didn't work, I just felt I looked like a scarecrow with unruly hair that went every which way, is thinning quite rapidly, and grows at a rate well below average.
Making a conscious choice for change, taking some time to research possibilties, plucking up the courage to take along a photo and say "can you do something like this" has been surprisingly liberating and empowering. Which may be, at least in part, why I am finally back to loving my hair, choosing to look the way I choose to look and ignoring what the fashionistas or the well-intentioned others may tell me I "should" be doing.
I don't wish I had done this back in 2012, and I certainly don't wish I had done it pre-2010, but I am happy that, finally, I have 'feel good' hair, even if the 20 years too late compliments evoke a bittersweet sense of how it once was.
All of which brought home to me very powerfully the importance of choice, and why we need to exercise it if we are to be who we are meant to be.
