Author: Michelle

There I was, just like every morning, standing in front of the bathroom mirror putting on my black eyeliner. Pretty eyes are my armor, my superstitious belief is that black eye liner will protect me from harm. I’ve been harmed, sometimes badly, on multiple occasions, so I’m not sure my belief in the magical properties of black eyeliner is particularly well founded. Still, my black eyeliner is a sort of talisman. It goes on no matter what. My eyes are the physical attribute which I never question. I always know I’ve got great eyes.

As I got ready to leave, I caught a look at my tousled rat’s nest of hair in the mirror. I forgot to brush my hair. Again. I briefly considered brushing it, but as I frequently do, I ended up saying fuck it, and walked out the door while working the worst of the tangles out with my fingers.

I wish I could say that going to work with my hair not combed is a rare event, but it happens on a very regular basis. I probably go to work without combing my hair more often than I go to work with my hair done. Always with my eyes done, though. Always. The eyes get done even if I’m sick. Even if I am woefully un-rested. I have black eyeliner in my purse, and back up eyeliners in all of my various pieces of luggage. I am uncomfortable if I’m ever in a situation in which I discover I am without it. Even if it’s a football game. I don’t ever use the backup eyeliner. It’s a total mental crutch.

The thing is, my hair is new to me. I’ve lived my whole life with thin, stick straight, shiny brown hair. Now it’s wavy and not so shiny and I don’t know what to do with it. It’s like I have someone else’s hair now. It kind of puzzles me when I see it in a mirror. I know what to do with my eyes. I’ve had them forever. My hair? It’s a mystery. I’ve only had it for a few years.

What’s funny is that I’ve always wanted wavy hair. Now I have it, and I have no clue what to do with it. I know what to do with straight, shiny hair. I don’t know what to do with this wavy, tangled mess. I didn’t grow up dealing with it. It’s like learning how to deal with a new boyfriend.

Like other things, I’ve had to give up something to gain something else I wanted. Nothing is free.

If you want a high profile career, you will probably have to give up a lot of family activities. Or delay having children. If you have a hobby like running marathons, you might have to limit your interactions with friends and family when you are putting in 10-plus mile runs every week. You definitely have to give up a lot if you’re doing something as time consuming as a half-marathon or marathon. That is really all you have time for if you have a full time job.

Sometimes, like with hobbies, you can make a conscious choice. Other times, like with hair, you take what you get.
Either way, you get something you want and lose…something.
No one gets to have everything.

Sometimes it seems like they do, though, doesn’t it?

So you just kind of suck it up. If you have so few real problems that having different hair is even on your radar as something to complain about, then you are lucky.

More than lucky.

I have a job that I mostly enjoy that pays very well, a family and friends who are great and a working brain and body. In the overall scheme of things, I have nothing to complain about.

Mostly, I try not to.

But…if I could just figure out what to do with this hair….

Now I don’t have to tell you
How slow the night can go
I know you’ve watched for the light

And I bet you could tell me
How slowly four follows three
And you’re most forlorn just before dawn
–Everything But The Girl/We Walk The Same Line

You know what sucks?
(Lots of things)

Waiting for answers.

I have no trouble with being stuck in traffic because I can listen to music and sing. Waiting for an appointment in a doctor’s office is fine because I can read. Kindle for smart phones is a waiting room life saver.

If I’m waiting to hear back about exam results or about something I am trying to coordinate or just an answer to a call or email?

Argh. I hate it.

The more important the answer is to me, the worse it is. If I don’t know when I will get a response, it can be excruciating.

Once I got the sweetest letter from my first
boyfriend who had moved across the country just a week or two prior. I was especially thrilled since I hadn’t really expected to hear from him again. When you’re 12 or 13, and someone moves to the opposite coast, things are pretty much over. This was back when long distance calls were expensive and snail mail was really the only option for people to stay in touch.

So I wrote back and waited for a reply. I counted how many days it had taken for his letter to get to me. Multiplied it by 2 and added a few days. Waited some more.

I didn’t hear back.

Back then, of course, that might only have meant that a letter was lost in the mail. So I wrote again. Counted the days again. Once again, there was no reply. It made for a long Summer, watching for the mail every day. Waiting for a letter.

I’m not sure when I stopped waiting for the answer to my letters. When school started, I started to fall madly in love with another boy. Sometimes there are very pleasant ways to end a wait that doesn’t have a definite end.
You can’t usually count on falling in love to distract you though.

Sometimes there are very unpleasant things that force you to give up. Someone could die, or be injured. Sometimes there isn’t really any way to tell specifically when you to stop waiting. Waiting for someone to tell you he loves you. How do you know when to stop waiting for that?

Today, if you send a message and don’t get a reply for half a day it seems like forever. If you have to wait a day or two, it seems like a big deal. When I was a teenager, it was about four days for a letter to go across the country. Nine days was about the soonest you could really hope to hear back. You wouldn’t really start to feel like maybe there was a problem for two or three weeks.

If you were waiting for a phone call in those pre-cellular, pre-voicemail, even pre-answering machine days, there were a host of other things that you could worry about!

Now the impatience and worry sets in almost immediately.

Back then, waiting took time. It was more of an endurance event–but you had a little bit of a grace period before the waiting anxiety or fear of not getting a reply would set in.

Better or worse?

Today I would like to apologize for being inadvertently unkind to someone.

If you think it’s you, it probably isn’t. If I was unkind to you at some point, and you are expecting a public apology, it could be coming in a future post. I have committed a lot of infractions, and I’m only on apology #6. You should totally send me a message and make sure I am aware of my offense and what sort of priority you think it should receive in my rating system.

No, there isn’t really a rating system…but now that I’ve written it, I kind of like the idea. There could be a list coming. If I could write this shit without actually reading it, things might be better for me. Yes, sometimes it DOES already seem like I don’t read it.

If you would prefer a private apology, please indicate so in your request. I am happy to accommodate special apology orders.

Anyway. On to my apologizing.

Shortly after graduating from High School, I broke up with someone who was very important to me. Someone I loved, but even then I knew we were really not cut out to be lovers. I think he knew it, too.

The reason I gave him was pretty close to the truth: I didn’t want to be such a low priority in his life. I could handle not being in the top four (school, work, music, family), but I was completely unwilling to come after hanging out with his co-workers getting high on any random substance they might get their hands on. Partly because the behavior worried me, partly because I wanted to be more important to him than that.

Not being in the top 5 was unacceptable to me.
That’s pretty much what I said to him. Not unkindly. Not with any real intent to hurt him.

But if I’m totally honest with myself, at the moment I said it, I said it mostly because I was angry. Angry that he’d canceled plans to see me so he could get high. Again. Not that we didn’t see each other a lot, but compared to seeing each other every day it seemed like a big change.

The thing is, I really hadn’t planned on breaking up with him at all. We were both going to be at different colleges in a just a few months anyway. He was staying in Oregon, but I was moving to Boston. All I really needed to do was wait it out, see him a little less often over the Summer and then move to Boston in August and let things sort of fade back into friendship.

There were a couple of incidents that scared me, and if I’d been honest with him I’d have told him that. I don’t think it would have changed things, but maybe it would have slowed him down a little. Maybe, maybe. I know I’m not responsible for anyone else’s trip through life. I’m barely responsible for my own. He chose his own actions, but still, I wonder.

Maybe if it happened now, I’d be wiser. I was certainly not very wise at the advanced age of 17, but then, who is?

Maybe breaking up with him was actually the kinder thing to do than just fading away.

Either way, what I’m sorry for is that I had to hurt him.