“Fall in love with being alive. Pick flowers and read books and understand that life is so much more than a Snapchat from a boy you won’t remember in a couple of years. Make the most amazing friends and get in trouble together. Make fun memories and take too many pictures and scream at the top of your lungs on a roller coaster. Swim in the depths of the ocean and feel the dirt underneath your fingernails when you climb mountains. Know the joys of genuine laughter and know the difference between wisdom and test scores. Understand you can be anything you want to be, but you have to work hard to get it. Be the change. Journal and write every thought down. Have unapologetic fun.”
-Unknown
(From An instagram post made June 28, 2019)
On June 28th, 2019 I made a life changing decision; I shaved my head. I know, I’m just another high school girl having a life crisis and making the decision to chop off all her hair, but hear me out. In the long winter months leading up to the mild summer day, things weren’t going as planned. Event after event kept happening to push me further into the hole I had dug for myself, and eventually it was as if the dirt had begun to fill the hole back up, leaving me buried. With shaving my head came the liberty of becoming confident in my body again, a feeling of being in control, and falling in love with being alive again. After months of choices being made for me, I found liberty in taking just one choice back.
Love, as defined by the Webster Dictionary, is “A feeling of strong attachment induced by that which delights or commands admiration; preëminent kindness or devotion to another; affection; tenderness; as, the love of brothers and sisters.” As I understand it, love is a crucial part of life and is needed to survive. What happens when we don’t receive, give, or have the love we should for either ourselves or others? In my sophomore year of high school I was in need of more love than I was getting, giving, and had. That’s not to say I didn’t have people who love me. My parents love me to death and my family is amazing. My friends -although rocky at the time- gave me more love than I deserved, and my then best friend (who has since become my amazing girlfriend) loved me back from the depths of darkness. What I didn’t have was love for myself or anything I used to love. That included, amongst other things, music, writing, and living itself.
As I’ve already stated: it wasn’t a good time for me. I was over eating, sleeping too much, barely going to school, and almost never went home. If I wasn’t sleeping, I was eating or binge watching Friends on netflix with my best friend, Hannah. A simple reason for this is what I have since learned to be bipolar depression and a social anxiety disorder. Bipolar depression means a series of low moods followed by a time of a lighter mood repeated. Easily mistaken with bipolar disorder, bipolar depression is different in the way of no symptoms of mania, a period of extremely high moods. This means not being able to get out of bed in the morning, dreading going to school, not finding a care in the world about anything going on in my life, and what feels like a loss of control. As home started to feel like a foreign concept to me, feeling like I belonged anywhere seemed like an impossible idea. I have since come to determine that the definition of a home is not a building with four walls and some windows, but a space that you feel safe and comfortable in and where you feel at peace. In current times this is my car, however, without a license and an older brother driving the only available car, it was not an option at the time.
As I walked up the four flights of stairs to Hannah’s apartment on June 28th, I had no clue I was going to shave my head. No idea of it was in the front of my mind. I mean, sure it was always kind of a thought in the back of my mind, but I never intended to act on it while I was still in high school. We were sitting on the balcony, letting our legs dangle between the bars like our very own puppet show while talking about secrets and stories, hard times and good times. A soft wind brought a peaceful chill through the air, cutting through the mild heat. I remember looking out over the parking lot to the cars speeding along on M1, the headlights blurring with the street lights to create a soft electric glow. I remember mentioning something about the beauty of it all, taking in a deep breath as my best friend did the same. Eventually I said something about shaving my head as my hair, damaged from many years of bleach and hair dye, fell into my face as the wind picked up and Hannah looked right at me and said, “do it.” with no hesitation. I looked back to her, slightly shocked and said something along the lines of, “really?!” and she nodded, explaining how if I truly wanted to do something I should do it, and if that was shaving my head today, then that’s what I should do- to hell with the rest of the world’s opinion. I agreed with her and a few moments later we were in the bathroom, Hannah holding scissors to my hair, and with a sawing snip it was gone, the weight of a thousand worries chopped off in an instant.
With the threads of an old life unravelling, I felt half insane as Hannah put the buzzer to my head and began to perfect my new style. The adrenaline rush was unreal -and that’s coming from a serious adrenaline junkie. clumps of my own hair littered the bathroom floor, my head shedding like a tree sheds its leaves come fall. I covered my eyes, laughing as I refused to look in the mirror, Hannah along with me. When I finally looked up, I saw someone that I barely recognized. The reflection staring back at me wasn’t the scared 16 year old who spent a night in the hospital a month before. Instead, it was a confident, beautiful, and smiling woman. The haircut itself was below average, done in dim light by two teenage girls, but it was enough to be what I wanted it to be, a change. A change that I controlled and that I did without a care in the world. It was a choice made entirely by me, for me, and in the best interest of me. For some reason the anxiety that would have normally plagued me was nowhere in sight. If I believed in God I would say it was a gift, however, I like to think of it as fate. I now love my body, for what it is, not what I wish it would be. From that moment on I have been confident in my looks and my new hair has definitely been a choice that I took back that let me become the confident person I am today.
Looking back on it, I didn’t realize how liberating shaving my head would be, or how much it would change my view on myself and the world. It gave me a new breath of confidence that honestly allowed me to become a much better version of myself. I started taking better care of myself in the months after that. Now, I eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full, sleep a healthy amount, rarely miss a day of school not due to a physical illness, found a home within my car, and have an amazing girlfriend who, as I mentioned before, not only cut the strings to that old life of mine, but loved me so much that I found a purpose to keep going with her. I can honestly say that I do not know where I would be today without Hannah and her support through this past year of my life. Without her immediate support on the topic of shaving my head, I’m not sure I would have done it and I must say I am very happy that I did. Shaving my head gave me a sense of control that I don’t think I would have regained had I not done a spontaneous action like shaving my head. Taking that one choice back gave me a sense of control at a time when I needed it gravely.
It can be difficult to start a new life with the strings of an old one clutching to hold on, but if you can cut yourself loose -metaphorically or literally- I believe you can become the best version of your self, just as I have. I’m not saying I was made perfect by the simple action of shaving my head, but I am a lot happier and in a much better place because of the choice that I made. In these few final words I have on the matter, I’d like to revisit that day once more when I made an instagram post with the caption, “Fall in love with being alive. Pick flowers and read books and understand that life is so much more than a Snapchat from a boy you won’t remember in a couple of years. Make the most amazing friends and get in trouble together. Make fun memories and take too many pictures and scream at the top of your lungs on a roller coaster. Swim in the depths of the ocean and feel the dirt underneath your fingernails when you climb mountains. Know the joys of genuine laughter and know the difference between wisdom and test scores. Understand you can be anything you want to be, but you have to work hard to get it. Be the change. Journal and write every thought down. Have unapologetic fun.” This caption means more to me everyday that I continue to choose to live. It means living life to the fullest because of the choice I made and falling in love with every moment because I am alive, and that feels pretty damn good.
-Stan
Long Drives in the Dark 