Thursday, July 9, 2009

Liberation in madness


I have complete moments of insanity as I am sure everyone has them in their life. I spent the first four months of 2008 in a mental place for the incurable (I checked myself "against medical advisement), and the month of September in a mental hospital. Those examples are a bit more severe then my last act of unabashed mental instability.
To explain why this was an obvious act of insanity, I must impress upon you that my hair is my life. I cry every time I get a hair cut. Not because the haircut is necessarily bad. But because the anxiety is so great, and its such a traumatic experience. Its like someone is cutting off one of my body parts. I am that attached to my flaxen strands. Xanax was my friend each time the abominable act was taking place on my head. I haven't had a haircut since I stopped using benzo's. My hairdresser, Betty, would even ask me if i had taken my happy pill before she would start cutting. We would laugh knowing it wasn't funny. Even then when the xanax would wear off, I would freak out, start crying and call Betty and tell her I couldn't believe she had done such a horrible job. She got used to it thank god because my previous hairdressers stopped taking my appointments after a couple of times.
That being established. I have NEVER cut my own hair.. until last weekend. I was standing looking in the mirror after my shower, water dripping down my shoulders and wet hair clinging to my face. I was suddenly compelled to walk into my "room," and get the sharpest scissors I have. I thought "What the Hell," and I lifted a bit away from the rest and just cut... OMG it was liberating! I began snipping away in a frenzy. The more I cut, the better I felt. Anxiety just melting away. It was wonderful. Hair falling into the sink; covering the bottom, and as it filled the free-er I felt. At one point my husband walked in and said "Oh, you're cutting your hair," in a mater-of-fact voice that was amazingly calm under the circumstances. He has learned to take my behavior in stride and only get involved when it seems like I may take actions that will incur bodily harm.
After walking away I would come back and pick up the scissors and take off some here and there. I woke up in the morning and clipped a little more here and there leaving the scissors on the sink in case of sudden need to cut some more.
In the end, I ended up only cutting the front around my face and just a bit of the sides. Layered and kind of pointy I think it is symmetrical at least to the unknowing eye. I keep expecting to break down every time I look in the mirror, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised. This display of madness was quite exhilarating.
Ok, that's enough about the damn hair. As my mother would say with an exasperated tone, "It's just hair Alice."
I've been up since 4am with the "autistic child." Awakened by his screams of joy as he stared at the cover of his favorite DVD. I had to have it rushed one day delivery from Amazon because it suddenly vanished from the face of the earth. It didn't arrive until 6:30 the next evening and I thought he was going to have a coronary waiting for it.
At 7:50 the boy went screaming all the way from the front door to the bus that will take him to summer school, and now begrudgingly its time to start my day. To act like the consummate suburban house wife. That is the persona I display to the outside world as I go about my everyday chores: taking my husbands clothes to the cleaners, picking up Alexander's seizure medications from Target, scrubbing the toilets and changing the sheets.
Actually I might begin by taking a nap.

1 comment:

  1. I would love to see your new hair cut I'm sure it is just as lovely and as beautiful as you are Hope to (hug) you someday soon AJ

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