constantly blooming.

Hair

Hair was, and is, an important part of my identity. It was something that always stood out, something you could use to pick me out in a crowd, something I was always known for. When I was younger, I prided myself in my long, unruly dark mane that I utterly refused to put up in any kind of hair tie or even accessorize it. Barrettes never worked in my thick hair and the only way I'd ever wear my hair was down.  It was something I became known for at school. My hair was huge. People commented on how I never brushed it, or that it was a 'bird's nest'. I just laughed it off.

The older I got, the more my hair became a problem. It got in the way of almost everything I had begun to get into and people's comments on it were starting to annoy me. So I chopped it all off. My hair went from down to my waist to just below the ears in about an hour. I felt lighter and more free from the societal constraints of my messy, unkempt hair being a problem. And it shocked everyone. I no longer had knots or split ends, but a very loose afro.

Sure, people still pick me out of the crowd (they look for the large, dark head of hair in a crowd), and still annoy me about how messy it looks, or how it can never be moved, or how much of it there is, or even why I had cut it all off in the first place. But bottom line, my strange, unique hair is an essential part of who I am and of my ego. My hair, long or short, was always me.

So when I first saw him, with his long straight-ish hair in a ponytail cascading down his back, my mind went backward. His hair was part of his identity, something people knew him as, something that defined him. He was different. Albeit, short hair on a girl isn't nearly as controversial and rather expected as it was a few years ago, but long hair on a guy? Not just long hair, but really, really long hair down to his mid-torso? Now that's weird.

I never thought about it before, but hair is so very important to me, and I thought I was alone on that.

But I guess not.