‘Since the disintegration of her parents’ marriage, she’d only loved two things. The first was her long blonde hair… the second was how easily she could cut if off.. and feel nothing’.
This quote from one of my favourite films; 500 Days of Summer, always intrigued me. I admired Summer Finn, who could so easily let go of things she loved, and move on. For the past few days I have been itching for a haircut. I really wanted to get my long hair cut and just accept a change in my life (even if it was as superficial as a haircut). Obviously with my long working hours and two jobs there was no way I could manage to book an appointment.
So as I was getting ready for bed one evening and catching up with my housemate, who was talking about a topic which I felt quite helpless about, I casually found a pair of scissors, grabbed a hair strand and went for a CHOP! As I looked down on the sink, which now was covered with a two-inch cut chunk of hair, I took a deep breath and realised that I felt NOTHING! For the first time in a while, I just did something and let go. For so long I had been holding onto things, holding on to my long hair, holding onto feelings I had harboured from situations, or even holding onto old clothes (yes, I am the absolute definition of a hoarder). I looked back at myself in the mirror, now missing a chunk of hair, grabbed another strand and went for another chop (by that point I was too far along to stop). By the end of this manic hair chopping ritualistic moment of insanity, I somehow felt lighter! Yes well, it could have possibly been because I had lost two fucking inches off my hair, but there was a feeling I couldn’t possibly ignore, a refreshing feeling of lightens that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
When I had just broken up with my boyfriend, I was a bit of a mess. I felt sorry for myself but struggled to move on, and kept holding onto my negative feelings. For months I had been carrying my pain around, holding onto my insecurities at every point in my day which I must admit felt very heavy. One day, when I was sitting in the terminal waiting to board a flight back from Milan, a really good friend of mine handed me his ipod, and told me to listen to a song…. As I sceptically put the earphones in my ear, waiting for the song to play, I looked down to read the title and it said ‘The Bag Lady’ by Erykah Badu a song I really recommend you to listen to if you are heart broken. After listening to it and bursting out with laughter, he looked at me and said, ‘Christina, you don’t want to be the bag lady, carrying your heavy luggage around everywhere you go’. And he was right, in so many ways I had been filling up my emotional baggage.
I had never realised that I wasn’t simply a hoarder but for so long, I had become an emotional hoarder too filling my emotional bag with negative feelings, bad situations or even fallouts with friends. The same way we are encouraged to do a spring clean, or cut off the dry ends of your hair, I do believe that detoxing your feelings is also essential, something that I had neglected for so long. Take some time to yourself to think of things that are important to you, try to resolve feelings that are weighing you down, and simply sort through those feelings and just CHOP THEM OFF!
And yes, maybe now I do have uneven hair, and till I manage to get myself into a salon I will have wonky hair that has been blindly chopped off, but somehow it seems okay, and me myself and my hair are okay! Taking time to let go doesn’t have to be a perfect process, but taking small steps or a few uneven cuts with the scissors might get you a few steps closer to a new look.
