Comfortably Lockless

I realized that after my rather whiny post about cutting off all my hair last month, I never followed up. With more than a month to adjust, here’s how I feel:

I like it! I love it! I’m glad I did it!

Since that post I’ve had it cut twice more (maintenance). I go to the barber shop; it’s easier and cheaper. Currently I’m training my now-regular barber to cut my hair without fear of taking away my girl-ness. Speaking of which, I thought it was adorable when my daughters, then and now respectively, believed I’d turned into a boy when I cut my hair! (Charis, now 16, was 3 when I first cut off all my hair and subsequently allowed it to grow back; Autumn is 6 and never knew me with short hair. Apparently to young girls, endowment with the appropriate number of “x” chromosomes is directly proportionate to the length of one’s hair.) However, I didn’t realize grown men, who cut hair for a living, can also be troubled with this same child-like belief.

Nonetheless, the careful training of my recently-adopted barber began with my first visit. I asked for a trim; he cut approximately .001 millimeters of hair. Despite his obvious trepidation, he did line me up very well. A fine start, all told.

At the second visit I said, gently but firmly, “I want you to cut my hair. Now, when I say cut,” I explained, “I mean like that gentleman there.” I gestured across the aisle at a man whose hair was long enough to brush, but short enough to withstand a strong gust of wind.

“Who, him?!” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, him,” I agreed.

Still shocked, he extended his arm and blatantly pointed. “Him?! Right there?!”

I too, pointed (more tactfully) to the hapless man, who was now the center of attention to the entire shop. “Yes. Him. Right there in front of me.”

After a tense, lengthy pause, he declared his resignation with a deep-chested release of breath. “Okay,” he sighed, in that tone that conveys the warning, “You asked for it!”

But he did a phenomenal job, and I can boast (though my own opinion is probably biased) that despite losing one of the (apparently) more important proofs, I still retained most of my girl credentials when I left his chair. I shall return this weekend to commence his training!

In the meantime, I’ve apparently inspired at least two of my friends to take the same route! Thankfully they’re both single, so I cannot be accosted by angry boyfriends or husbands who might fear mistaking their women for boys if they look too quickly.

She’s Come Undone …

It’s late (early). I’m not tired, but I’ll pay for it later today. It’s been a while since I’ve been awake enough in the middle of the night to actually get out of bed… And it’s been a good while since I’ve posted anything. I feel detached lately.

I think of my life–the business of being me–and I’m frustrated. I feel like I’m standing in the middle of 9,546,241 very tall piles, and I’m busily moving them and rearranging them. I make some of them shorter by adding to other piles. I make some of them taller by taking away from other piles. But the piles aren’t really going anywhere.

I know these feelings reiterate everything the Bible has always said about life on Earth. More and more I see the truth: This world has nothing for me. Life, as seen through the lens of “achievement” and “success” and “democracy” is empty. Everything is vanity, grasping at the wind. In other words, who gives a crap? Why do I?

But here’s what’s really bothering me: I think I know what to do. I think I know what God wants from me. But I don’t know if I have the courage to do it. It seems impossible, and I’m a chicken. I’m a lazy little chicken, moving piles around because that way it looks (to me, and to everyone except God) like I’m doing something. Moving piles because I know how to do that. I hide behind my 9,546,241 piles, whether I want to or not.

Do I derive some strange comfort from being in this place? Omigosh, I think I do. I guess that’s the price melancholies pay. Here’s something funny: Because of my natural bent, I resent this box called “personality” (specifically the box called “melancholy”) because it means I’m a slave to some prescribed notion of who I am. “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!” I rage at the machine! Yeah. Typical melancholy.

I have to break this cycle. And I know, I really do, that the answer is found in my relationship with God. I’m actively, aggressively being passive with Him. I love Him so much, but I just feel like being in my shell right now. I’d like to pretend He can’t see what I’m doing in here. I know, at least, that He’s waiting for me to poke my head out. I think He’ll smile at me when I do. Like the way my mom smiled at me when I was 3, and I packed a jar of peanut butter and a spoon into a hobo bag and “ran away.” I was gone all of five minutes. And when I came back, my mom smiled at me, and we went on with life. She told me later she’d watched me the whole time I was gone, when I thought I was alone.

I’m going to bed so I can move piles in my dreams.