September living in the past

I have spent the entire month of September mourning my hair. The. Entire. Month.  This time last year, I was in agony.  I couldn't look down at my computer screen without my neck burning.  I was spending every single night with a heating pad twisted around my next to try to ease the pain.  I was at the end of my rope. I had tried the strengthening exercises and the stretches. Nothing worked.  And so, I decided to do what someone who is in pain and is desperate usually does: the extreme.

I cut off my hair. I took a picture of Taylor Swift (who I look nothing like) to my stylist.  I thought a cute little bob would make the pain go away. And it did! At least the neck pain.  My cute little bob was not in fact cute.  It was horrible.  It was chopped unevenly and strangely.  It didn't hang even and sat at the most unflattering length for my face. If it were on Taylor Swift, she would have written a song about the stylist.  It was as if Sweeny Todd dropped acid and took to my hair.

I felt shorn and naked.  Like many other women, my hair was something I could hide in.  I had mastered the art of the dropping my shoulder and slightly leaning so that my hair curtained my face, essentially blocking off anyone's view I wanted to.  Now, there was no curtain.  There was no hiding. There was only exposure.  Suddenly, every garment I owned seemed to make me look 10 pounds heavier.  The cloak of invisibility that I was so used to sneaking around the world wearing was gone.

I tried to grow it out,  I did all the tricks-prenatal vitamins, scalp massages, hanging upside down. Whatever the collective wisdom of the internet suggested, I attempted, desperate for my safety blanket.  Of course, it took time, but my hair grew back to my shoulders.

And the neck pain started back up.  I tried to bargain with my neck, promising regular massages and lots of special care if only I could have my hair back. No dice.  The pain got worse and worse, and I got more and more desperate until I did it again. I cut it all off.

Which brings us to today.  I have a cute little pixie cut with sharp sideburns and v-shaped bangs.  Everyone tells me how much it suits me, how sassy it is, how edgy.  And I'm like the cheerleader stuck in the glory days telling people, "But you should have seen my hair long." I can't take the compliment.  It doesn't feel like a compliment.  It feels like a compromise.  My pain is gone at the cost of my locks.

And until science gives me a way to somehow rewire my neck to support weight, this will be my hair.  And one way or another I am going to have to accept it.  I think we all carry an impression of ourselves around in our heads with us. In my head, I have long hair, I'm still as thin as I was last year, and my skin is perfectly clear.  It is when I look in the mirror and I am confronted with the opposite of the image in my mind that I am unhappy with myself.  Somehow I must make the woman in the mirror and the woman in my head into the same person.  I must accept myself as I really am.

It is as simple, and as hard, as that.

Has this been your journey? How did you handle it? Is this you now?