I’m incapable of feeling satisfied with my hair. If it’s long, then I fret over how it looks and I can’t wait to cut it short, and if it’s short, I know that everything would be perfect and I’d magically wake up a superior person if only it would grow twelve inches overnight. As a result, I spend most of my time in a purgatory of awkward middle-growth; occasionally – so briefly! – reaching the desired length only to hack it all off again, like I’m harvesting a ripe crop.
No doubt this says many profound things about my wobbly identity, and my lack of healthy emotional outlets, but nevermind. Most of us use our hair as an open theatre for our state of being, with or without Caesar’s murder on loop, so I know that many of you will sympathise. It’s never ‘just’ hair.
Anyway, here’s an illustrated example of my average twelve month cycle. At the start, my hair is almost long, but then all of a sudden I can’t stand it: it’s too feminine, or too conventional, or whatever. I shave it down to the quick, and for a week or so it feels fantastic. I’m the coolest person ever. I can fight aliens. All the dopamine on planet earth is coursing through my system, until it wears off and I realise that I’m not cool at all, I’m an animate, life size monchichi doll. Then begins the long wait. Four or five months pass, by which time I’m avoiding public places and daylight in general, and then I drag the mess to my hair stylist – tolerant woman – who fixes it. I briefly resemble a medieval French squire (be still my heart, even if I’m not quite sharp enough to pull off the look), then I’m back into the awkward middle lengths, until at last I loop around and start again.
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