I'se so... sad. What is up with this? I constantly feel this week like I could start crying, and the moment I'm alone in my room, in the evening, it wells up, thick inside my throat. Everything awful and everything beautiful and everything in between can potentially overpower me. And it's not a big deal; I don't mind crying... there are quite a few emotions over which I'd choose sadness, but it's just a bit intense.
And the doctor didn't even flinch when he saw my hair. He didn't even do a double-take. Actually, he went so far as to call it conservative, but that was in comparison to what I actually wanted to do to my hair. See, the answer to, "Is Mary's hair blue?" is actually "sort of." Apparently, it's impossible to communicate, to express what I want and have that happen. I went to this little salon dealie (which is tres weird for my DIY heart; it's only the second time I've had my hair dealt with by a professional) with a bright, happy atmosphere, to see the lovely friend-of-Mommy's who's a "master stylist" and who agreed months and months ago to do this cut-and-dye. at that time, my mom talked with him about the cut I wanted, and the color, and they've discussed it a zillion times since... so... I thought we were clear. When he started to bleach my hair without having chopped any of it off, I got a little nervous, and I asked my mom if he knew I wanted it cut. She said he was going to do that last, which seemed weird to me considering the supplies and time that'd be wasted dying hair that was going to end up on the floor. But I took her word. And since he didn't ask me any questions about what I wanted (the typical, "So what are we doing today?") I didn't think to explain it. Two hours after I went in to get my hair shorn and blue, I had shoulder length, straight (at least he knew enough not to try and convince me that my hair looks good blow-dried and poofy, like the other stylist I saw once upon a time) brown hair with some really spectacular blue streaks. It looks fucking awesome. It is not what I wanted. and I took that pretty personally. I don't know exactly *why* I took it personally. I just... have been trying to make this happen since early April. and there's a lot of reason and symbolism and shit behind it, along with the fact that I just want what I want. and when he finished and we were all looking at it, I knew it looked good and I knew it wasn't right, and I did not understand which part of that mattered more. especially when everyone started saying how good it looked. my mom knew it wasn't what I wanted, and so she brought that up, but dark hair with blue streaks does look pretty freaking spectacular. I think that's what's hard for me. I didn't get what I want, I didn't get what I felt was "me", but what I got is good, so I figure I should be satisfied. maybe I even figure that if the hair I wanted was "me" and I got this hair instead, I need to "be" this hair. as in, more conservative, more subtle, more restrained than I am. I'm supposed to have short, entirely blue hair, and I have a few streaks in my long girly brown hair. I think that's probably a big part of the disappointment and the reason it feels more like an injury than a simple mistake. a major reason I decided to do this was to help me quit being who I'm not, and now I feel like I have who other people want me to be growing out of my head. which is slightly demented. but not entirely untrue.
anyway, I have another appointment Tuesday to cut it short and dye it all. I explained in detail to my mom what I actually want, and how the cut is allowed to vary based on what he thinks will work because he has a better sense of this than I do. i.e. I don't care about the exact details of the cut, so much as the basic idea and the fact that every last strand of my hair be the fabulous blue color I have here and there. I felt comfortable with that because, unlike when I met him Monday, I didn't feel at all capable of talking or being social while I was there. and he knows I have an anxiety disorder and he has some actual knowledge of anxiety disorders, so I didn't feel like a total dunce when my mom translated a few things for me. because I've been jumping some pretty brutal hurdles this week and - knowing he isn't going to take it as arrogance or unhappiness or something else it isn't - I felt ok just shutting up for awhile. a relief, that...
my mom thinks that maybe he was a bit worried about dying it blue because blue is apparently the hardest color. if there's any yellow left in my hair (and yes, there is yellow in my hair - I saw it today... I was blonde for awhile and it was very scary) it dyes green. so now that he's seen he can successfully give me blue hair, (I love the color; I really, really love the color) she thinks he'll be more gung-ho to go for it on Tuesday. so my hair stylist and I are both anxious? fantastic.
but I can live with it for a few days. I like it well enough. and I do get to look in the mirror and go, "it's BLUE" ... and catch strands peripherally that are so. not. brown, etc. plus, it's really soft and it smells really wonderful. I keep petting myself, which is silly but true. oh, and, when my mom mentioned that I haven't had my hair cut professionally in a gazillion years, he was impressed. apparently, I could be a hair stylist. oddly enough, my entire family thought this was my calling when I was one or two years old. I was bald, but insisted on carrying a brush - and sometimes mousse or a hair-dryer - around with me. I used to brush my bald head. but it's ok to be nuts at that age because you're - I was - so damn cute. not to say I'm not so damn cute now. in a spifftacular way, having a few blue streaks in my hair has completely changed what I see in the mirror. well, not completely. but, as when I changed glasses and other times I've cut my hair, I'm drawn to what's changed, and what's changed is more me, so I see more of myself when I look in the mirror. (contrary to the whole "somebody else is growing out of my head" theory earlier mentioned.) mostly, I just looked in the mirror today and started grinning because I *finally* have hair like I always point out... I finally *am* the girl with the seriously rocking, pretty blue hair. and that makes me happy. ...by which I mean I feel like crying.
::considers banging head against keyboard, but decides to simply shake it - head, not keyboard - instead::
I'm also disappointed that my brothers don't get to see it properly. I bailed on the celebration with my dad, which I think has turned into a baseball game now, and so I probably won't even see Joe... but Dale's staying here tonight, and it just bugs me that he's seeing the wrong version. even if he liked it. (who knew?) he liked it, although he didn't seem to understand why I wanted it changed. which I understand. as I've said twelve times now, it does look good. and he probably doesn't understand why I want shorter hair - but whatever... mainly, he doesn't really care what I do with my hair, which I suppose is appropriate. fine. it just threw me that, despite the fact he was belittling my taste within two minutes of arriving, he didn't ridicule the hair. I know he's trying to connect to me, but I really don't understand the neural pattern that leads him to think criticizing things I like will achieve that end. perhaps surprisingly, I'm one of the least critical people in my family... by which I mean, most of my siblings and my mom have a tendency to critique everything, whether they like it or not. maybe it has to do with that. maybe brothers are just weird.
I told the doctor about missing my sister. I said something like, (after going through all this shite about whether or not there was anything going on this weekend for me to be a part of) I was "annoyed...and I guess hurt...and I really wanted my sister." That confused him a little. Three points that didn't quite connect... I explained that it confused me, too, and told him how they seem to do more together lately, and everything is the guys + me - by default. and it's not so much that I want it to be more even; I just know that if it were more balanced it would feel more like I was out with my family. that's one of the reasons that the holidays have sort of worked, even with my parents' divorce. with all my siblings around, it still feels like family; my parents were rarely in the same room anyway. I dinno. the doc and I talked for a long time today about my dad. he had me crying a few times. (you know, every time I type that, I still feel like it's a big deal. I was *crying!* I was also blinking and breathing!) we talked about the reasons that it's difficult to be around my dad, and how I want to see him- in theory, but it always sucks in practice. I told him how my dad and grandma have this amazingly fun form of entertainment where they spend the entire visit talking about how I don't visit enough. when will I come again? it drives me insane. and this is on top of everything else, including the insinuations that I should move - or even *could move* there - that I'm not being fair, that I don't love them enough, etc. he asked if I get more of that than my siblings do, and I told him I think we all get it, and it's possible I'm just more aware of when it happens to me, but I actually do think I hear it the most. Sarah actually gets quite a bit of that when she's in town, but it's always understood that it's expensive to fly in and difficult to get off work and she has a lot going on far, far away in NYC. whereas, I live with my mom. I "still live at home." (from their perspective.) and so there's this feeling, even more than with John - who lives the same distance away - that I should be out there more often. I mean, John has a job. John has things to take up his time. He's got a job on top of being a musician... And me. You know. I sit around and eat bon-bons. (I don't know *why* it's bon-bons, but it's always bon-bons. Personally, I'm far more likely to eat animal crackers or something, but no... as with Dickens' coffin-nail/ doornail confusion - it's clearly stated that one sits around eating bon-bons. Not animal crackers and not yogurt pretzels. Bon-bons. What one drinks I don't know. I venture a guess it's not juicy juice. It's probably gin or something...) obviously, that's *not* what I do. I have nervous breakdowns and therapeutic breakthroughs and meals and naptime, and let me tell you something - it's exhausting. as Sara said, so beautifully, there are days I can't even get out of bed! I'm that overwhelmed with this invisible "nothing" of a task I spend every damn day at. So excuse me for not using my vacation time for guilt trips...
the hard part, the scary and sad part, was that the doctor basically agreed with me. he mentioned something I was thinking about (ooh, telepathy) - a conversation we had months and months ago regarding the fact that my mom "got" to walk away from this relationship, she no longer had to negotiate and navigate around it, but I do, and I don't think that's fair. he reminded me how, at the time, he encouraged me not to distance myself from my dad because that can happen too easily, unnecessarily, when a divorce happens and a kid's living with her mom, and so forth. but apparently, my dad hasn't really come around the way the doctor was hoping he would. he said that he was really hoping that after the dust settled, my dad would show up to be my dad. I said something about how I love my dad, and I want a relationship with him, and I think it's ridiculous that two people who are so people-oriented and so affectionate should end up this far apart. but I continue to back away, and he continues to stay put... so we talked about what it means to be people-oriented. I basically just meant relational; I tend to think of that as something I have in common with my dad. the doctor tells me that he has something hard to say, that it would be a great deal easier - and well, a great deal more difficult also - if he didn't know anyone in my family, if he only worked with me. he said that I am people-oriented. I care about people, I want to help them be happy, I want to do what I can through service, etc, etc, etc. I'd been thinking more about just - relationships - but he meant those, too; he mentioned that I often talk about my friends from a "what can I do to help here" perspective. I thought about the two careers my dad has had, and how the link between them is that they helped people. that's how I always explained to my confused listeners how my dad went from being a pastoral associate and director of religious education to being a massage therapist. I was still thinking about that when the doctor said that, although I was definitely people-oriented, he'd never gotten that vibe from my dad. I thought really hard about that, resisted the desire to just argue with him, and thought about how many times he and my dad had sat in the same room... and he *never* felt that about my dad? he explained that my dad's service tends to be about my dad and his own needs, which I feel guilty admitting I understand. truth told, I understand it because I've "used" helping people that way... the doc said that my dad's good at being a dad when it's within the parameters he's set up, the ones he understands, but he won't go outside of those perameters. he won't see my need and come to aid me, and that hurt a lot because he's my daddy, and I want it to be wrong, but I'm not sure whether or not it is. I almost went down the "well, if we're bashing my dad, we're not letting my mom off the hook" route - but I realized how much she's done just this week to help me be ok. and it's not just because she's here or because I ask her for things. I don't have to take the initiative for her to parent me. she just does. and that's different - I think that's different - from my dad.
which suck-suck-suck-suck-sucks. the doc said he also disagrees about my dad being affectionate. he said that a lot of people are touchy-feely (and I guess my dad can be that way; he hugs and stuff) but that being affectionate means caring for someone so much that your emotions sort of spill out into physical gestures. and in that way, being affectionate is more than being touchy-feely. "you," he said, "are affectionate."
hearing compliments you know are genuinely meant at the same time you're being told that you're justified in distancing yourself from one of your *parents* - when that's not what you want to have happen at all - is a bit emotionally confusing. maybe that's where all the tears are starting. some chemical reaction between opposing emotions. I do want a relationship with my dad; I don't want to distance myself from him. but I want to distance myself from how things really are. I want a relationship that would require him to change in ways he's not going to change...
mainly, I just told him how this week is insane, how there's so much going on, about the Hell Bus incident, about what I have going on this weekend and next week, and how it's overwhelming and I'm losing my mind. I told him I hate this bus thing because I'm not behind it. I know it's something I can do, will even want to do, but that's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because my mom got this job, and suddenly it became, "you have three days to learn how to do this." high stakes, pressure, expectations, a lot of what's making me nuts lately. so, what did the doctor do? doctor magic. he made my back-up appointment for Monday my actual appointment. I won't have to take the bus; I'll see him later, after my mom's off work. he asked me if that would help, and when I nearly fell out of my chair with relief, he said "why don't we just do that?" he told me that he had no doubt I could learn to take the shuttles, and will, and the only reservation he has about moving my Monday appointment is that he doesn't want me to feel like he thinks I can't do this (do I not have the best doctor in the world? wowsers) - because I definitely can. I felt very affectionate when he said that. and weirdly enough, I feel far calmer about the bus thing now. as in, after yesterday, I thought I'd need to do it a few more times with my mom - which might be what I choose to do - but now, I feel like I could just go practice by myself over the next days. I guess knowing that I have more time to screw up frees me; I don't know. I just need to keep in mind that it's not set for Friday either, that we can just as easily move that appointment, too... because when a deadline is postponed, it still gets to me. having more time doesn't help me so much if I know when it runs out. remember the whole "make a commitment to getting better" thing? I did it in about five seconds after he took away the, "do this by Monday" clause. and I probably would have done so even more quickly if that clause hadn't been there in the first place. anyway. he's good. he said I'm putting out a lot of energy this week, but it's like it's going into a vacuum. he does think I'll see rewards come from it, but he thinks they'll take awhile. so for the moment, it's just exhausting. apparently, I looked so terrorized when he saw me in the waiting room that he thought I'd come by bus today. eep. must be pretty ragged underneath my partly blue hair.
so anyway. an extension on the bus adventure. a transition (I didn't want) from brown to blue hair. real, short blue hair Tuesday. doctor again Monday. Monday night. by car. I haven't had an evening appointment in a hundred years; I kind of like the idea. you know what idea I really like? having the right changes made to my hair. and all of these people who are like, "well, this way you get to see that you like it before you go further" and "well, were you really sure that you wanted it short and blue; I mean what if you hate it" can shut the fuck up. I want this. I've wanted this for a long while. and I'm *really* easily confused right now. so don't try and un-convince me of the few things I know.
~me