Written while waiting for the dye to set in, with a towel over my shoulder.
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I dyed my hair black today. For no apparent reason.
Perhaps that’s not entirely true. Perhaps I was just tired of seeing the same version of myself/my face every day.
My hair had been brown and soft and long for a while. The kind of hair you grow out when you’re trying to stay quiet. When you’re pretending stillness is the same as peace. I guess I was hoping something would change without my having to change it. But it didn’t. So I did.
When I was little, I used to hide behind my long hair, when my eczema wouldn’t intervene, anyway. On good days, it fell like a curtain I could disappear behind. On bad days, it stuck to my skin, tangled in the weeping patches on my neck, and reminded me that even the parts of me I used for hiding didn’t always want me.
I thought if I stayed still enough, quiet enough, maybe no one would see me and I could vanish without ever having to leave. Perhaps that echoed safety to me. Perhaps it still does.
Black isn’t new to me. I’ve dyed it before, sometimes to cover my blue hair, sometimes just to disappear. This black feels like that same instinct, but sharper now. Not a child hiding something, but an adult simply choosing. It’s cover, it’s armor.
Also yeah, it’s the lowest maintenance color for me. My roots are already dark. It makes sense. But it also makes me make sense again, a little. I think I missed choosing how I show up in the world.
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