Right Down the Middle

About 7 years ago, I started shaving my head. Not the whole head, mind you. I started with the sides. I was scared to do more than that. I wrote an entire post on Facebook and Google Plus about exactly why I did it. For the most part, it was fueled by a desire to take back some control over a problem I’ve had since childhood: trichotillomania. As was the case in 2013, I still have it mostly under control, and it’s only a problem when my hands aren’t kept busy in times of boredom.

I spent several weeks looking at pictures of haircuts, trying to imagine what I would look like if I shaved down the sides of my head. Eventually, after a lot of hemming and hawing over it, Shawshank grabbed his clippers and we went into the bathroom to do it. I was terrified. Due to my experience with trich and how it affected my relationship with my hair, for me, short hair was, and still is, one of the scariest things.

There were many hairstyle experiments in an attempt to cover things up, including one terrible weekend involving Vaseline. I wore my hair pulled back in a barrette that had a big white bow – whatever couldn’t be covered up with hair from the sides and top of my head was (mostly) covered by that awful bow, which I was also picked on for wearing every single day (and if I didn’t wear it, I would have been picked on for being bald, so it was a no-win situation).

As it grew back, my hair corkscrewed into unruly cowlicks that pointed straight up, forcing everything on top of it into an awful, lumpy quasi-bouffant style. I vowed that I was never going to have short hair ever again. I’ve always been especially sensitive about keeping the top and front long, perhaps subconsciously preparing for a way to keep things covered up, just in case.

Since that post, my hair’s gotten shorter. I started doing just the sides, using the #2 blade guard on the clippers. After a couple of years, I started buzzing the back as well. At some point, I moved up to the #1 guard, then eventually skipping the guard altogether about a year or so back. More recently, I let Shawshank shave it smooth. The two of us were in the shower, and he slathered my head in thick conditioner and did the deed by feel because his glasses fogged up in the steam. I marveled over the way my scalp felt.

Over the years, he’s constantly joked about shaving it off entirely. Monthly bleaching has left it feeling like fiberglass insulation when it’s dry, and cheap, wet Barbie hair when it’s wet. It breaks when I brush it, and tangles more easily than straight hair this length ever should. Every month we’d clip each other’s head, and every month he’d turn the clippers on and say, “right down the middle, right?” I’d laugh, he’d laugh, and I’d tell him I’d let him know when it was time.

I’ve been thinking it over the last few weeks. The most recent bleaching was particularly awful to it. My hair makes a “squelching” sound and stretches while I rinse out the bleach and the conditioner that follow every color stripping. It’s generally a two solid days before I feel like I can detangle it. One of the cashiers at work shaved her head at the end of April because of a bad at-home dye job. She looks adorable. I told her I wanted to do it, but I didn’t want to feel like I’m copying her.

“Do it!” she told me. “I can be the bald one in the front, and you can be the bald one in the back!”

I wanted to do it last night. I lost my nerve. Some women do it and look so confident and badass. If I did it, I feel like I’d be less Imperator Furiosa or Ripley, and far more 2007 Britney Spears. I’ve spent this morning and most of the afternoon thinking about picking up the clippers. I started looking at pictures online of all these gorgeous haircuts, and my heart is beating out of my chest, and I’m thinking I need to just fucking get it over with already.

Update

Two hours later, and it’s done. Shawshank called while I was in the bathroom cutting it shorter before I used the clippers. I told him I’d do it on the phone with him, but he wanted me to not be freaking out while he was talking to me. I was terrified. It was a major rush.

My head feels like velvet, and I feel fabulously badass.