comb
My hair is finally long enough again to need to be combed after washing. When it’s shorter, I just run my fingers through it to push it back and call it a day. Aside from during my spontaneous (and short-lived) extensions stint in the summer, I can’t remember the last time that I had to comb my wet hair. Probably back in 2022? The last big chop was in winter of 2022. It was after my first couple months at this job. My first real job. My first time hearing phrases like “bandwidth” and “rat race” being applied to people. I think it was actually around this time of year as well, because it would’ve been right around the holiday remote period. I was meeting up with two co-workers for dinner on a Saturday and ran late because I showed up at my hair appointment that afternoon without a plan. But as soon as I mentioned possibly wanting to cut my hair short short, my hair stylist took matters into her own hands and I walked out 18 inches lighter.
That wasn’t my first big cut, and it probably won’t be my last. Women’s haircuts are often associated with mental or emotional fragility - they’re supposed to follow breakups or career changes, and are meant to be an act of rebellion against society, I guess. I think for me, I just hate having long hair in the winter. It gets stuck under my coats and scarves, caught in my bag handles, and makes showering more annoying. But in retrospect, the two times I chopped my hair before probably can’t be attributed to mere happenstance or physical discomfort. I think I cut it when I knew I was heading towards the wrong direction. (Or maybe not wrong, but at least not exactly right.) It was probably my attempt to reset, to tackle things with a fresh try and approach that potentially wrong direction with optimism. Unclear if it worked, and I guess that does feed into the whole “hair and emotions” thing, but I did LOVE having short hair. I miss it sometimes, but these days I’m more excited about finally breaking out my comb again.