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So, I really suck at blogging everyday. Just to point out the obvious.

Speaking of things that suck: these bangs that I still haven’t gotten trimmed. They’re only driving me completely fucking crazy. I might just trim them myself, though that’s liable to end in disaster. We shall see.

One thing I know I won’t do myself ever again if I can help it is dye my own hair. Awkwardly trying to apply dye and then not sure if it’s rinsed out completely while accidentally dyeing my ears- not thank you. I spent five years as bottle redhead over less gray hair than I have now.

Growing up, there was a black and white photograph hanging on my parents’ bedroom wall of my father from when he was about 20 years old. Next to the the fact he just had a mustache and not the full beard I’ve always known him to have, what stuck out to me was how dark his hair was. My mom told me more than one occasion that he got his first gray hair at 19, a warning of sorts, but at 13 that seemed like a long time away.

The summer before college, I was at a party for two of my friends who were leaving for Kent State in a week, and someone pointed it out to me: my first gray hair. After a couple OMG NO WAY GUYZ OMG, I spent 10 minutes in the bathroom trying to pluck it out with my fingernails. If you’ve never been brought to that point, congratulations, I hate you, but only temporarily.

The thought of going through college with senior citizen hair horrified me, so two weeks into the semester I was at my friend Anne’s house as she painted dye on my head. I chose a bright auburn shade because I thought it would look good with my skin tone and clichely bring out my eyes. Looking back now, I probably subconsciously wanted to distance myself from who I was in high school more than cover a few gray hairs (a delayed Angela Chase syndrome, perhaps), but that’s not what I told people at the time. “I HAVE GRAY HAIR,” I would stage-whisper. If others would point them out to me, I would get self-conscious, yet I was eager to share my reason to be reaching for the bottle to anyone who would ask. I’ve never been very good at keeping my own secrets.

Having someone else dye my own hair was fun. What wasn’t fun was having to redye it again every month by myself. The dorm bathrooms looked like a murder scene when I would finish. My parents banished me to the basement sink with its dim lights and awkwardly-placed mirrors. Not ideal at all, but I kept at it, and went through different shades of red. Some were lighter, brighter, darker, purpler (the worst).  At one point, I tried to get as close to Run Lola Run as I could without bleaching. The whole time, I honestly thought it looked good.
In the post-graduation, pre-moving-out, parents’-basement-dwelling-days, I could finally afford to get it professionally dyed, which I did a few times. By that time, I chose colors closer to my natual brown. I suppose I wanted to look more professional, but I think I knew my obnoxiously colored hair days were behind me. I haven’t had my hair dyed in almost two years, when I realized it was an expense I would have to do without in order to live on my own.

And now? I’ve gotten more compliments on the color of the hair that grows out of my head than any out of a bottle. Friends from college, who never knew me as a brunette, tell me how much they like it better. At first, when people would, you know, say something nice to me, I reacted as most insecrure neurotics do and pointed out my flaws. “BUT I HAVE GRAY HAIR!” I would bellow. “See?”, pointing to my temple. Often, I was given a strange look back (which is what I deserved), and told that they couldn’t see anything. As with most things, it was a bigger problem in my head.

It took some time, but I made peace with my pre-mature aging. I don’t want to rule anything out, but unless I wake up one morning with Driving Miss Daisy hair, I won’t be dyeing it any time soon.