Dear Hot,
When will you be not hot? (I don’t dare ask for cold.)
Also, it’s my birthday: have some consideration. Be 75 degrees, please. 90 is too many. I am withering.
Sincerely,
Someone who is melting off a year of her life
I need to stop daydreaming while pressing the button on the shaving cream for 60 seconds or more.
Or, alternatively, I need to appreciate waterfalls of snow in May. In the bathtub. On my hands.
I need a banana. More yellow. Less tension.
I need a jacket with waterproof pockets, so I can collect rain in them to sip on long journeys.
I suppose I need a twisty straw, too.
I need you to remember who Eeyore is, and teach your children, too.
I need a job.
Leslie reading about a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Good morning! If only we all had butterflies to sip our tears.
In Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park, butterflies sip a yellow-spotted river turtle’s tears. The mineral-rich liquid helps the insects reproduce. In exchange, the reptile gets a good eye-cleaning. | Photo by Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures
“So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandvia The Rumpus
This is perfect.
I never thought I would say this, but I miss high school. Not the drama, necessarily, or all of the bad things that happened, but I miss feeling free. I had a job and stuff then too, but I still had this sense that I could do whatever I wanted, and nothing too terrible would happen. I felt invincible, really. I guess that’s just part of being young.
I also remember how friend-centered my life was then. My friends were my family. We supported each other, and connected deeply. I spent just as much time thinking about my friends as I did about myself. I wish I could say the same thing now.
I feel curled inward on myself, like a leaf afraid of the sun. I have become a master at not connecting with people, making sure that I don’t go past a certain depth, wading in the shallows afraid to go in past my knees. I like to be able to see my feet, to know where I’m standing.
Why is it so hard for me to trust people? I’m so much more cautious than I used to be. Which in some ways is good; in high school I tended to be a bit reckless. But now I feel hedged in by fear.
All of this is exacerbated by the fact that I have a job that I don’t enjoy, and am earning a degree that I probably won’t use. I like feeling that what I am doing is important, and right now it doesn’t feel that way.
I miss the closeness of my high school years. I miss feeling powerful and full of potential. I was going to do great things. And yet now here I am in the middle of nowhere, earning a Masters in English.
I guess I’m just feeling nostalgic. There were a lot of bad things about high school, and I really wouldn’t want to do it over, unless it meant erasing all of the stupid things that I did the first time. I learned last semester that nostalgia was originally thought of as a mental illness in soldiers who were so homesick that they couldn’t function. The word has since changed slightly in meaning, but I still find it interesting that nostalgia was originally considered an illness. I am sick with the past.
And, at times, sick of the present.
The gerbils got an addition to their house!
So last night I was sitting at home avoiding grading papers when it hit me: I needed bangs. Cutting my hair into bangs would solve all of my problems. But of course, I couldn’t have bangs with my hair as long as it was (to my waist). I needed short hair. So why not cut ten inches off and donate to Locks of Love? I leapt from the couch, ready to have all my hair chopped off. Unfortunately, it was 10:00 at night. Too late to get bangs. I had to wait. I couldn’t sleep I was so excited.
This morning, Chris wasn’t feeling well so we didn’t go to church. I planned to be at SuperCuts at 11:00 when they opened. The directions I had showed SuperCuts as being in the middle of a cemetery, which I thought was strange, but I didn’t let it bother me. I set off blithely, feeling impulsive and carefree.
SuperCuts was not in the cemetery. After driving around bit, I found it down the road. Spirits slightly dampened by getting lost in my own neighborhood, I was still not to be deterred. I didn’t realize that while SuperCuts may not be physically in the cemetery, it is a hair graveyard. My hair didn’t even know it was coming. It trusted me.
I marched in and plopped down in the seat, showing the stylist a picture of how my hair used to look. I wanted it to look like that again. She said okay. And then she sliced my hair off. She laid the ponytail in front of me. It was limp, like a dead ferret. My head felt light. It was like losing a limb. I was beginning to feel regret, but it was too late to go back.
With growing apprehension I felt her snip away at my head. Felt, because I didn’t have my glasses on and I couldn’t see what she was doing. After she cut my bangs, I knew something was wrong. ”Sometimes you have to train them, if you haven’t had bangs in a while,” she said uncertainly. I put my glasses on and looked in the mirror. ”It-it looks great,” I stammered, not wanting to be rude. She put my ponytail in a bag and told me to have a nice day. I slunk out of the salon, feeling whipped.
When I got home, Leslie (the turtle) looked at me like my head had sprouted an alien. I told her to be nice. She just kept staring. Chris started to come into the room, so I did what any rational person would do: hid in the bedroom and told him not to come in because my head was broken. He told me it looked fine. I remain unconvinced.
And that is how I happened to have over ten inches of my hair cut off today, as well as bangs. Hopefully children with cancer appreciate it. And despite the tragic tone of this post, if you you’re considering a major haircut, donate! It’s for a good cause. :D
I drew this back in college. I think it’s funny. :)
