When I was really little I had super blonde hair, with these amazing loose curls at the ends. But, apparently, I had this problem that - if it was long enough - I'd stick my hair in my mouth and chew/suck on it. So my mom chopped it all off.

I don't have pictures from my childhood with me (my parents have them all), but since then and for as long as my mom was deciding my haircut it was very short. I had a perm in 2nd grade. I had a bowl-cut for a while. It was awesome.

Eventually, I got old enough to not chew on my hair when it was long, and I grew it out.

This is me, age 13, with my grown-out hair before I started screwing with it. (9th grade school pic)


At age 14, I convinced one of my best friends to dye my hair for me so we headed down the street to K-Mart and picked up some L'Oreal.


Then I cut it. Though it's fairly close to my natural color, I liked to dye it a bit lighter and brighten it up.


Then I cut it more and looked like a fucking idiot. This is when I was 15, I think. Still dyed, I'm pretty sure.


Then I cut it even more when I was 16, getting rid of all the dye. (So did my BFF from high school, which prompted the rumors about us being lesbian lovers.) I liked this hair cut, though...probably because it was one of those basically effortless styles.


But, I got tired of that within half a year and decided to grow it out again. Me, in one of my senior pics, age 16:


I spent a while growing it back out, dying it again (and again, and again) to be something other than a bland, dull and ugly dark dishwater blonde. Me, age 18:


Then I cut it. Age 18, about 2 months after the last picture was taken:


I spent a long while dying it various shades of blonde and brown and cutting it into different styles, but keeping it pretty short. I looked stupid a lot of the time because I was using box dyes and didn't understand anything about hair color. I'd (of course) get some really bizarre results which would then force me to promptly re-dye. I was killing my hair.

In this picture (age 20), you can't really tell, but my hair was really dry and damaged despite my best conditioning efforts. But, I like the cut quite a bit (though it takes effort as my hair isn't actually straight like that...)


Then I started gettin' all kinds of crazy with unnatural colors. Which meant bleaching that box dye shit out of my hair (hah!). This is a couple months after that last picture:


And a few months later:


The next month:


As you can see, I am lazy and I'd let the semi-permanent dyes fade until it looked horrible before re-dying. But nonetheless, I was dying my hair a lot, changing colors frequently. So, the next time I tried bleaching and re-dying I melted my hair and had to chop it.

I tried to be festive for Christmas, though:


Re-dyed again a month later:


And again:


And then, when I was 21, I lost a bet (a card game - I'm serious) and cut it all the fuck off. I mean, total cue-ball. I don't have pictures of that because I hated it, but this is what it looked like a couple weeks later:


Grew it out.


Added color again and got naked on the web:


Me, age 22, hair dyed again:


Let it grow.


Added more color, got naked again (age 23):


Finally, I went black:


Got a cut I loved


And, aside from adding some color to the bangs for a while...




...I've just been pretty much maintaining the color and letting it grow like that for almost two years. Because I really, really like it.

I've been in a weird mood since about the middle of October.

I am introverted and generally feel quite anxious around people. I like to stay home and cuddle up in front of a movie; I enjoy quiet nights hanging out with a few of my friends. I am pretty strongly averse to any situation in which I must intermingle with mere acquaintances, and I especially hate having to interact with complete strangers in social, small-talky kind of contexts. And yet, solitude, too, disagrees with me. Thus, I depend almost shamefully on my boyfriend and a scant handful of other individuals to satisfy my need for social interaction.

Trillance moved to LA in August. Because I had the anticipatory excitement of seeing my parents for the first time in over a year, I was OK through September. And then, happily, Trillance ended up coming home with me for over a week because he had to recover from his surgery. Despite ridiculous travel schedules and exorbitant costs, we have still managed to see each other every weekend (except one) since he moved away.

Really, we knew this was coming since, oh, May? We’d already dubbed the time from August 2010 – August 2011 “The Year of Compromises”. We steeled ourselves for a stressful combination of separation, stretched budgets, demanding work and school commitments, etc. We moved me in to a smaller place. We vowed to keep our weekends free so that we wouldn’t be burdened with distraction during the small amount of time we had to spend together. In my head I came up with reasons to appreciate the distance: I’d be able to spread out my sewing (etc.) projects without being in anyone’s way, I would have plenty of silence during which to study for my courses, I wouldn’t distract him from writing his dissertation, we’d value our time together even more, we’d realize how much we love one another…

While those things are actually true, ultimately he’s not here, and that’s a problem. The cats (one staring at me from across the room, the other curled up asleep on the cat tree) don’t really make up for the empty feeling. I am reluctantly realizing that, despite our best efforts, I am emotionally fucked up over this.
Since mid-October, I’ve been struggling to maintain my motivation, to keep some semblance of routine in my daily life, to accomplish even menial tasks like watering the plants, putting away the clean laundry, or returning that damn Netflix DVD. Sometimes I think I am strangely out of touch with my own emotion: it took me a while to actually notice this as a persistent sentiment, to recognize it as a problem and even begin to think about the source (though, truly, it should have been obvious).

Actually, I don’t think it really hit me until my boss left for a two-week vacation. To any outside observer, this may seem an unusual catalyst. To understate the case, my boss and I have something of an unconventional relationship. Despite our age difference and the supervisor/employee dynamic, he has become one of my very best friends – he knows details about me that I have shared with only one other person and, although by nature he is not particularly forthcoming, I believe that he has nonetheless opened up to me significantly as well. Even before Pierre moved to LA, I had come to depend on our daily lunchtime walk together. My social circle is small (I generally like it that way), so with both Trillance and my boss being away, I was left to my own devices. What had been so far passing as a less-enthusiastic-than-usual emotional state became to me an obvious depression, and what I had excused as decompression after the stress of vet school applications became a persistent lack of motivation.

Chris has been back to work for a week now and we’ve resumed our normal interactions. I’ve made some effort to seek out time with other friends, and, of course, Trillance and I have been spending our weekends together. But this feeling persists. I can’t seem to pull myself out of it.

I feel guilty, knowing that there are truly important things for me to be doing (working on my composition class, finishing my Guelph application, making doctor’s appointments, etc.). Despite very real deadlines and pressures, I have zero motivation to work on any of these things. I have this constant feeling that whatever I am working on at the moment is uninteresting; no matter what I’m doing, I constantly want to be doing something else. I switch idly from task to task, never really finishing anything. This has manifested itself in about 20 different projects I have planned, purchased supplies for, and even (for some) actually started – ultimately perpetuating the problem my scattering myself further and making everything seem overwhelmingly impossible. So, instead of doing anything at all, I often end up most nights zoned out on the couch, chocolate and snacks close at hand, passively absorbing some pointless movie or other. Relative to my usual conduct it sort of feels like I’m barely passing at life. Or, maybe, it’s more that my life is passing me.

I’m angry – no, furious – with myself for being unable to drag myself out of this lull despite knowing full well that I’m in it, and what the consequences will be if I don’t. Right now, the best I can do is to attempt to record what I’m experiencing. At least for now, doing so is a mildly interesting activity – I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to write something tonight. Maybe I can share it with Trillance, and even Chris, just to provide them with a clearer and better-organized version of the thoughts they’ve already heard me express. Maybe they will even be able to help. If anyone could, I think it would be those two.