#which is Crazy ive never really been complemented on my physical abilities

[babyboybuckley]

Life really is crazy sometimes huh

[mo-ondial]

im going to cut my hair this week. 

when i was in first grade, i wanted to cut my hair. but i also kind of didn’t. 

cutting my hair meant that i could donate it. my hair could help someone with cancer! that would be cool. and i didn’t like brushing my hair, and i didn’t like washing my hair, and i did NOT like it when my hair was wet, or dirty, or ponytail-headache inducing. 

but i also kind of liked it. it was long, and it flew in the wind behind me when i ran. i could braid it at sleepovers, and put bows in it, and could put all sorts of pigtails in it for crazy hair day. when i got older i could dye it, all sorts of pretty colors. 

i decided to keep one, long braid. 

funny interlude actually, i wanted one braid in the front. to pull my hair out of my face, and so people could see it. but my mother wanted one in the back. she was trying to talk me out of it, because she didn’t want to deal with it. she also worried that having hair too long braided could give me a bald spot. so we decided that i would have two, and we’ll decide which one to keep. 

i still have two. 

so i was two-braided kid. 

people ask me so often why i did it - on the street, at the dentist, at school. sometimes i say i don’t know. sometimes i say i don’t remember. sometimes i say that it was just a fun thing i thought of when i was little, after all, why do first graders do anything? 

i think i wanted to be like rapunzel in the books that i read, like my uncle with loooong matts that he says he keeps because it keeps the past with him, like the native american draftees that i read about in an article, that were excellent trackers, but it lessoned their ability to track greatly when the army required them to cut their long hair. 

i wanted to be like myself. my hair changed so often, i liked donating it, and i liked change, and i wanted a piece of me to be recognizeable. i always remember the people with interesting hair. 

there was pressure put on me to be good different. i was allowed to be quirky, i was allowed to be odd, as long as i remembered that i had to be funny and cool to make up for it. i needed a redeeming quality for how odd i was. i had to be good different. i forced myself to be as outwardly weird as i could because i was scared of blending in and scared of being singled out for my actual insecurities. i needed to put that difference in between me and the white, cisgender, straight, pretty, able-bodied, skinny person that i thought was “average”. i was too scared of measuring up to what everyone told me was “normal” and “default” and coming up short, that i needed to run the other way. it was my job to entertain, to put on a show for people. i remember laying awake at night in third grade, trying to rewrite the way that i talked so that it was accessorized and quirky but good quirky. “whats a more original way to say hello?”, “i should say ‘steal’ instead of borrow, i think that’s what sarcasm is”, “i think it would be cute and funny to wear mismatched socks”. 

“i wonder what hairstyle people would notice?”

but it was cute. i was young. i liked it at first. 

at girl scout camp when people nicknamed me they named me braids. 

yea, braids. that’s me. i have braids. 

its what people remember about me. my sister when working with people in my grade mention my two long braids, and people remember that more than they remember my name. 

just last week, we were playing psyche, and the question was what i would patch a hole in the roof with, and someone put my braids. 

hair. it’s weird. it’s a part of your body, yes, but also not quite. i can’t feel it. there aren’t any nerves in it. and you get to choose some of it. you start out with what comes from your scalp, be it curly, straight, dark, light, thin, thick. but you get to choose the length, the style, you can dye it, you can make it your own. it is in between body and fashion. 

when we give affirmations, and the rules say that you can’t give physical complements, i still without a doubt get ones that complement my braids. 

are these a part of me? is my choice that i made in first grade that they are complementing? is “braids” a personality? 

don’t get me wrong, i used to like it. a long time ago. i still do. maybe. or maybe it’s just change. 

my father tries to convince me to cut them off. sometimes jokingly, but also not. they’re too much work. but isn’t me who does the work? 

my sister says that i have to cut them eventually. when i say i want to keep them forever, that’s ridiculous. but if i say i will cut them eventually, then yes, that’s the right option. because what if im rejected from a job interview? i certainly can’t go to college with them. i can’t have them as an adult. 

everyone says eventually. but when the fuck is eventually? 

i don’t like them anymore. i really, really, do want to cut them. it’s been long enough. i’ve been keeping them as some sort of obligation to who i once was, which isn’t who i am now. they keep me from being able to have the hairstyles i want. they’re the reason i can’t lay down in the grass as rest me head. the reason i can’t wear necklaces or things with too many rhinestones because they get caught. the reason why i have to stop myself from getting my head wet in pools because it would confine me to hours of brushing. they’re remnants of my need to make sure im feminine enough and accessorized enough to be respected. they aren’t mine anymore. they’ve always belonged to other people. for other people to see, to touch, to play with. 

so i started mentioning that i want to cut them. 

really? cut them? why? yes, i am the same person that cried when a camp bully came at me with scissors while i was sleeping and tried to cut them off. but then is different from now. 

now that i say “now” instead of “eventually”, look how everyone disagrees again. 

even my father, against it from day one, says that he kind of regrets it, because he’s going to miss them. 

my mother resents me cutting them even more, for she’s the one that read in my diary the words “trans”, “nonbinary”, “they/them”. my braids are the last feminine thing about me that she doesn’t want to give up. 

but funnily enough, when she says “But they’re mine too! You can’t cut them!”, that’s when im sure i want to cut them. they are on my head. they grew out of my head. i brush them and braid them every month and every time i go swimming. whatever part of myself that other people think that they own has been stolen from me, and i have every right to take it back. 

isn’t this hard enough? deciding that hey, im grown, i can give up this thing that ive gotten so used to and attatched a part of my identity to? seeing the last bit of my feminine childhood fall to the floor? why do you have to make a fuss and make me hate my hair even more instead of this being a personal right-of-passage for me and a good sendoff?

but everyone wants to get rid of something eventually. because eventually never comes. 

but “eventually” is now. i’m tired of eventually. seeing a doctor eventually or fixing my teeth eventually or getting therapy eventually, moving bedrooms eventually, asking her out eventually, using my preferred name eventually, living eventually. 

i’m not cutting my hair eventually. 

im going to cut my hair this week.