Goodbye Hair!

I think that any person’s journey of self-exploration often comes with some personally daring actions. Mine was cutting all my hair off and shaving it to about half a centimeter of its life. I have always wanted to do this, daring myself quietly from the back of my mind. For me, it exudes a kind of freedom, independence and self-reliance – the kind of qualities I, and many other people I'm sure, have yearned for. I remember thinking about doing it two years ago, and then telling myself that no parent wants to meet their darling child’s teacher and find her nearly-bald and Buddhist-monk-like. It was bad enough that I was just out of nappies myself, and so felt that doing the deed then, just as I hoped to get a job as a young, respected teacher, was as bad as getting a tattoo across my forehead.

So the desire was pushed towards the lyrical future of my travels. I’ve spent the last eight months growing my hair so that I could tie it into a joyful pony-tail, always knowing that the heat of Bali might just give me the push I needed to ‘realize my dream’. And so it was. In the last week or so, my hair was becoming limp and annoying in the humidity. No sooner had I prettily clipped it back,  was a hair elastic grabbed to tie it crudely up and out of the way. My hair and I were beginning to have a bad relationship, and one should always try to have a friendship with one’s body parts (recently I’ve been trying to make friends with my bowels, but that’s a story that probably won’t appear on this blog). So, it took a few days of upping and downing in my mind, thinking about the things that people will think about me. Reasoning with myself in and out of it, until the decision became too unbearable and I knew that the only decision was to ‘do it’, because then I'd know, I'd have done it. Luckily cutting one’s hair is not like cutting off one’s arm – it always grows back.

So after realizing (once again) that my journey was a personal one, and that the very fact that I was concerned with what “people would think” was to me, exactly the reason why I should go through with it. I needed to stop caring about whether or not I'd look pretty, and accept that I probably wouldn't! So it was decided. And on the morning of ‘the deed’ I pushed the details and questions and wonderings firmly out of my mind. I told a few new friends here and they fully supported me as well as discussed the disadvantage of pointy-out ears. I did not tell anyone back home, I did not want to scare myself out of my decision.

So it was then that I found myself sitting in an upstairs beauty salon, watching as my very flamboyant hairdresser “Risky”, prepared his electric razor. I think he was secretly delighted as he waved his hands about, telling a tale of a French woman who came in with her hair down to her bum and left his salon with a completely bald head. I reassured him I was not going that far. My American friend came with me, and it was good to have her moral support. She took a video of the ‘cleansing process’ and I can now watch as my face changes from complete apprehension to looks of delight that it was all coming off. Because, as I was sitting there, it felt so completely right and good – I was clearing energy of the past few months and starting afresh and anew. The feeling of walking out with my almost bare-head in the breeze was one of the most beautiful things I have ever felt. And so now, I wander Ubud feeling cool and fresh, giving myself a fright every time I catch my reflection in a mirror or the glass of a store-front window.