Away

Freedom

I sit in a leather chair, and watch as my hair falls to the ground.

The traffic is racing past outside the floor to ceiling glass window, behind the vinyl stickers advertising cheap and trendy haircuts. Vibrant yellow taxis surrounding black rovers, all speeding down the road, then stopping as the traffic lights sound, then racing away again, then repeating.

New York is... Alive.

That is the only way to describe it. It does not stop. Outside is a constant stream of noise and light.

Inside this hairdressers, though, it is quiet.

The woman cutting my hair is Asian. I think she is from Vietnam. When I came through the door and asked for the shortest cut I would suit, she tree her hands up to her mouth and cried "but your hair is beautiful, why must you cut it?" In a lilting accent.

I told her I wanted to be different.

She showed my a magazine with beautiful glossy models, all sporting short haircuts, straight, curly, crazy. I flipped to a random page and pointed at a very short, very choppy, layered haircut with a side fringe. The lady frowned for a second, then concluded it would probably work for me.

So now I watch as scissors cut away most of my hair.

Dark, brown wisps fall to the floor like descending feathers. It's almost done. I am almost a different person.

For years, Mum made me grow out my hair, so she could style it and curl it and play around. As if I was her little play doll.

I'm not hers anymore.

I'm mine.

I asked her if I could cut my hair a month ago. She almost screamed, and lectured me on how I needed to look like a girl. I told her I didn't want to look girly. I told her I liked skinny jeans and sweaters and short hair. I told her I didn't like skirts and dresses and long curls.

Mum had tutted and muttered to dad about the bad influences at my school.

"Disgusting. Half the girls at her school aren't wired up right. They sin. We shouldn't have sent her to a girl's school. Should have homeschooled." Mum had said to him in the kitchen that night. I overheard.

I know what she meant by Not Wired Up Right. I understood perfectly. I had wondered what she's think if I told her I was one of those girls. One of those girls who wasn't "wired up right" in the eyes of mum.

Now she knows, though. She read my leaving note.

"There we go, we are all done. Do you like your hair?" The hairdresser asks, sliding her scissors into her apron pocket and sweeping my fringe across with a manicured nail.

At first, I don't think I'm actually looking in a mirror. I think I'm looking at a photo of somebody entirely different.

The roar of the traffic dies away as I stare at Alex, the new Alex, staring back at me. Her eyes look like they're ringed with smoky eyeshadow from the lack of sleep. Her lips are slightly parted. Her fringe (no, her bangs. They are bangs in America.) falls over part of her right eye. Wild layered hair falls around the tops of her ears. A few wispy long bangs brush her chin.

But no hair tumbles down her back anymore.

I tilt my head to the side and watch, jaw hanging open, as I see all the hair stops at just above my chin level.

"You like? Yes, no?"

I swivel my chair around and I can feel tears brimming in my eyes. Finally, I'm being me.

"Thank you."