Tociat
“I can’t do this anymore.”
She whispered. Her reflection stared back at her, tears streaming down her face. She looked into her eyes, red and drained of life. Every day she forced herself into an uncomfortable shell. Crop tops, jeans, sneakers, pretty girl makeup and a pretty girl smile. Always trying to be trendy and desirable like her friends, but it always felt wrong.
The makeup on her face, her cold stomach, her cinched belt and shoelaces, every texture, every sensation drove her close to insanity, but nothing irritated her more than her hair. It was crunchy, artificially straight and begged for constant care. She secretly hoped that one day it’ll become damaged enough to suddenly fall off and maybe then she can start all over again.
She sat down with an irritated sigh and rubbed the corse strands between her fingers. If only she could start all over again…
What if she could? What if her dad’s hair cutting kit was just under her parent’s bathroom sink? What if she borrowed it, just for a moment, while they aren’t there to witness a single thing? Wouldn’t it be thrilling to hold that type of power in your hands? The power to change your entire life.
In what seemed like an instant, the scissors were in her hands and the clippers were plugged into the outlet on her counter. The only thing keeping an army of silver blades and a head of bleach blonde hay from warfare was a thin boarder of panic. Two paths stood before her. She could put everything away and keep this moment as a tightly locked secret, or she could start a new life. One she had always dreamed of.
No, I should be thinking things through. I’m probably just crazy, life is fine as it is, right? Opening her eyes, she was transported to a forest split into two hiking trails. She turned to the path behind her, the one she had always walked upon. Was there ever a single thing she loved enough to stay where she was for? A breeze of memories flew through her mind…
That friend group who never really liked her, the sports she always played yet always hated, all that gross attention she got from boys. She spent every moment worried about how she looked, how she acted, making sure she did everything right. Every waking hour was a walk on a tightrope. One wrong step and she’ll fall from glory. What greater cause were the tears she cried every other night going towards?
“Nothing… nothing here was ever worth saving.” She thought to herself.
Breathing through the gut twisting tension, she raised her gaze to the mirror one last time before saying goodbye. With scissors in her quivering right hand, she raised them against the tresses she clutched with her left. The blades charged at her hair, slicing them away until their path had been cleared. The remains hung an inch or two above her shoulder. If you were to guess how much was cut, it would be at least a solid eight inches, but it wasn’t enough. Grabbing the same section, and then some, she cut even more. This time it laid against her face at a harsh angle, from the top of her cheekbones on the left to the bottom of her nose on the right. It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t matter. More and more of her hair’s heavy length fell onto the floor. The scissor blades chopping away at such thick hair didn’t sound like a typical snip sound, but had a loud, distinctive sound, like pulling apart Velcro.
Once the final chunk of length was severed, she ran her hands through the remains. Her disbelieving fingers drove for miles in every direction. The newly cut ends were fluffy and soft. The bleached blonde came to a sudden stop right around the root. A sliver of brown peaked from her scalp. The style ended up looking like a barbarically chopped mullet. It was a mess. There was only one way she knew how to fix this.
She unlatched the forbidden, black case and dug up the clippers. Still trembling from cutting her golden locks, she held the clippers in both hands like an enchanted sword. In this moment she knew that her fate was changing for good. She dug through the pile of loose guards, searching for the perfect length. Two. She measured it against her roots and it was perfect. She fumbled trying to fit the guard over the device, thinking it was supposed to be pushed on from the top. Or the bottom? After a few attempts, she frustratingly slides the device on top of the guard. Click!
“Oh… it slides on.”
She flipped the switch and gasped for air. Looking up at her reflection, she saw the device held up against her head and the mess she already made of her hair and switched it off. She turned away from the mirror, sinking to the floor. She hid her face behind her knees, but they couldn’t protect her from the frenzy of doubt caving in on her.
“No, I’ve already taken it this far. I need to finish what I started.”
She slowly stood, ripping every chain that tethered her to the floor. Each pass piles more hair around her feet until there was no more. Her reflection was jarring, but it wasn’t complete. Her entire body trembles as she kneels and hastily picks up chunks of hair from the floor before taking off her clothes to shower to wash away every last trace of her mask. No more showy clothes, no more makeup piled onto her face. She was finally… clean. Not just on the outside but inside as well. She put on new clothes, a softer pair of pants and a t shirt of a video game she liked, and wiped the steam from the mirror.
As she gazed at her bare head and exposed face in the mirror. She wasn’t the girl she was used to seeing she was finally just Amanda. The world may ridicule her and her parents may ground her for getting into their stuff, but she can deal with it tomorrow. For now, this moment and this identity is hers and hers alone.
