Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Hair Trauma

I just got home from having my hair cut. It needed to be done. After six months of absolutely NO professional treatment, it was getting pretty raggedy. I knew going in that I would need to cut off several inches.. but I didn't realize it would be SIX. Yeah.. five to six inches came off in a matter of a minute. Then it was 'cleaned up' which meant another half inch or so. I was amazingly relaxed while it was going on and it wasn't until after I left that I started to have my breakdown which came to it's climax when I showed my dad and his response was literally...

*eyes widen* *mouth drops* "OH MY GOD!"

(Sorry, Lord. He was shocked.) Yeah.. I pretty much lost it. I cried. I can't believe all of my hair is gone.. I can't even hide it in a pony tail. It looks awful. More than anything, I'm sad that I lost so much hair. It took me so much time to grow it out and my plan was to let it grow until I entered a community. That's still my plan.. it's just a plan that's five inches shorter now.

*sigh* I really want this gift to be beautiful for our Lord and that's about the only thing that is keeping me from crying again now. It will grow out again and with regular maitenance, it will stay healthy. Now all I need to remember is to breathe.. and stay calm.

I don't even want to see people now.. they're gunna freak just like my dad. My stylist and his team of course love it but they always do... or at least they all pretend they do. And I think the reason I didn't freak out DURING the process was because A) my hair was so long I couldn't even see where he was cutting initially, B) I didn't have glasses so I couldn't see anything anyway, and C) I was talking to him about discerning a vocation to the religious life. He had so many questions and I was happy to have answers... Yep. Totally distracted.

Experiences like these are exactly the reason I wait so long to go back.. ho hum.

3 Comments:

Blogger Julie D. said...

GIRL ... having your dad freak out is not that big a deal ... dads all do that at the drop of a hat. Certainly mine did when I came home from college with my hair in an afro.

I bet it looks great ... just follow that time-honored tradition of holding your head high AND ignoring parental opinions about hair (and you don't have to pass this advice on to MY girls, by the way. ha!).

1/02/2007 01:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I freak out every time I have mine cut (which I need to do this week before graduation... I don't think I've had it cut since Easter). I'm sure it looks fine, you just need to get used to it. :)

1/02/2007 09:34:00 PM  
Blogger Adoro said...

Several years ago, I had hair down past my waist. I was talking about cutting it, and met a woman in my ski patrol candidate class who told me about "Locks for Love".They are an organization that makes wigs out of real hair for kid suffering from cancer (and obviously the hair-loss from the chemo).

Well, I was only going to cut off about 6 inches because I loved having long hair. But after talking to her, I went to the website, and then decided to go for it. Another woman I worked with was a student in a hair salon, so I got to be her "hair model", but first she had to take off the extra inches. I lost 12-15 inches that day. I still remember her placing that long ponytail in my lap, and I just sort of held it numbly.

The next week I sent it in per the instructions from Locks for Love, and they sent me a thank you card, which made me cry. I'd made my donation in time for a child to have a new wig for Christmas.

Incidentally, the woman who told me about the organization was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer a year later. Before she lost her hair completely, she had time to donate TWICE!

Sometimes God asks us for amazing things...and sometimes he asks us for that which he has already given us abundantly and which we take for granted. And it might hurt, but in the end, the reward is far greater than the sacrifice.

1/06/2007 08:37:00 PM  

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