In Which : Rena is narcissistic and conflicted and muses

By this time tomorrow, my hair will be short. Really short. The shortest it's been for about three years, anyway.* My hair and I have a complex relationship, and I suppose it's a bit immature of me to decide it's better to just hack it all off rather than put effort into managing it. I have a habit of twirling it absently around my finger** and/or wrapping it around my neck like a beloved yet flexible pet or a large, fluffy scarf. Lately, because it's hot out, my hair spends most of its time perched on top of my head looking disheveled. (When let out of its restraints, it falls to the middle of my spine, more or less.) Maybe I'm making an impulsive decision and will wish it back during the winter. This remains to be seen.

I'm doing this before school starts*** as a sort of signifier of things. Of change. I'm not shallow enough to believe that because of some quality time with a pair of scissors and the arbitrary beginning of another year of my formal education I can emerge as a beautiful butterfly, but I'm going to make an effort. (There's that word again.) An effort to break the chains of my self-constructed and self-imposed awkwardness, an effort to enjoy even the non-academic aspects of school. My hair has little-to-no role in this change, but it is perhaps a universal symbol of female empowerment****, of starting anew and being reassured that some changes aren't permanent, that hair grows back and I can always go back to being comfortably awkward if the effort is unbearable.

* I've discussed this on Tumblr but can't find the link for it.

** I'll be getting it cut too short to have much to twirl, which is a good thing because it's a pointless habit really, and I'm trying to stop.

*** T-minus 11 days, holy crap.

**** Unless you're Justin Bieber, I'd venture to guess that hair cuts are not an emotional matter for those of the male persuasion. Whereas I've had many opinions from my female relatives regarding my choice, varying from my mom urging me to cut it extremely short ("Like Emma Stone's? Er, no, Watson's--is now." She seems to have forgotten the Great "getting bangs will make me look like Hermione"-Regret of 2003-2005.) to my grandma's pleas to keep it long. My head, my rules, guys.