I am a fan of change, I find it fun. This is probably because everything is always so monotonous these days: people follow the same trends, use the same colors, preach trendy ideologies, read the same books, follow keto diets... I could go on. In constant change, my reader, that's where I find my authenticity and where I get that adrenaline buzz we crave once in a while. I am up for adventure and for whatever comes my way. Some may call it care free or unbalanced, but others might call it passionate and authentic.
Thursday July ninth. Around 4.30 in the afternoon i'm on my way to the hair salon. I am ready for something new and I can't wait to get there and get started.
So I get to the salon and I make friends with the hairdresser- we need to be in the same picture for this idea to work- and I show him pictures e.t.c. I wanted the hair of a girl I found on instagram and he loves it, he thinks it goes great with my skin and eye tones, so he's down for it. A kind of caramel hazelnut golden "bronde" (blown & blonde) with baby lights in some places. I believe many will be confused with my description, mostly men haha, but that is literally how I described it. So there I am, sitting for hours and hours and more hours. It's already 10pm (yes, It took this long) and my parents are starting to call me, but I am 15 minutes from being done so I just text back.
10.15 pm and I'm getting my hair blow dried and the color is starting to show. Little did I look at myself through the mirror like someone who is getting proposed and wants to say no. I stare at myself in disbelief and in severe shock with the color I had on my head. First off, my father was never really in agreement with the idea of me dying my hair, why? I don't know, so I knew that an argument was on its way. Second, the color was nothing like the one I had shown in the picture!!!! I seriously was trying not to panic and to show some gratitude for the hairdressers six hours of nonstop work.
So I freak but I say I love it anyway. Pepe (hairdresser) definitely loves it and even asks if he can take pictures of my hair, and so he does. He is thrilled showing me the before and after but I am just staring at myself in the mirror, definitely not feeling like myself.
I get back home around 10.30 and my parents are pissed off because it is late and the hair looks not good on me, and I'm being nice.
My father almost flipped, he hated it. I know many of you might be thinking “its your hair, what does your father care” and I agree. He is an honest man which is something great and something not so great as well, like many other things. So he gets mad, and I get pissed because it's my hair and I can do whatever I want with it. After a nasty conversation I decide I want to go to bed and so I do.
Here come the life lessons now.
Fast forward to monday july 13th. After a weekend of hiding my hair around the house and the fact that I actually hated it too- because I am too proud- I make another appointment at the same salon at 4.30pm.
Before lunch this day I had a conversation with my father where he expressed his feelings and why he had reacted to my hair the way he did. I remember clearly that he told me he always wanted what was best for me, gave a few examples and used the word normal more than once.
Now, this is not a story to shame my father, not at all. He is an amazing man who cares fondly about his family and has always treated all of his children with love. He is simply a man of big opinion and that makes him great too. For this same reason I am not pointing out the exact conversation we had.
Back to the point. After this conversation I had a gazillion thoughts going through my head. I wanted to understand why he thought that being a brunette was better than being a blonde in his opinion!!! He told me God made me this way and that since a baby I had my beautiful brown hair!!! I was stressed out.
To be honest I never understood nor I will. I simply took it as a lesson. Opinions, they can be so powerful but they too, can be too personal. That day my father taught me that I am free to have my own opinion but that my opinion, as it is an opinion, is not going to always be the right one. What if I loved the blonde? What If I felt like myself in it?
This conversation too made me question the definition of normal. My dad mentioned some things that were normal, or looked normal. In my head I was disagreeing with most of it. There are things that some find normal that others don't. There is no such thing as normal, nothing fits that word right, because as individuals we like and dislike different things and that is ok.
Free of judgment, I stayed silent to disagree with him because I was not going to waste my energy trying to change his views- of stupid hair-when he strongly believed them. I understand the past where my dad comes from and the way his mind works. Please don't start with the submissive comments, because that is definitely one thing not me or my father practice in our relationship. I am free and thankfully given everything I need.
That was the first lesson.
The second thing I learned, well they might break into two but they go into the same category. One, I was definitely not feeling myself in such a fake blonde hair tone. It simply wasn't me and doesn't go with the personality I have or the things I stand for. I honestly will not be going to the salon every three weeks to get it retouched. But those days, even though they were as few as five, my self esteem dropped and I could feel it. I didn't want people to look at my hair and when I looked at myself in the mirror I saw no reflection of myself looking back. It might all sound a bit more exaggerated than it was, but the feelings were real. I disliked it very much on me and felt like such a fool that I had wanted it for so long. I learned that this thing I love so much: “change” isn't always so great and will not always make me feel my best. From now on I definitely need to act slower and think of the outcomes before I take a leap of adventure.
The second lesson that goes into this same category is my pride. Ashamed to admit it but brave enough to, I am. I am proud and I work on it. Not until I wrote this did I come to see how It made me feel. Pride is a trap, but I won't go into that so much.
In the end I was truly in awe, in a bad way. How could my hair color cause so much fuzz and annoyance. It grows out again and it's there to cut, dye and style as one wishes. I am left in some confusion because it is such an irrelevant thing, but I can see there is a bigger reason behind it, my relationship with my father, and pride, for both of us!
Happily, I went back to the salon and got my hair fixed exactly to the way I wanted it! The people who work there were understanding and very nice to me when I requested change. Change! Lol.
It is a silly story but I guess in situations like these we all learn and grow.
I'll keep being a free spirit for sure! I'll just double think about the outcomes now.
Stay you.
Xoxo, Stella.
P.s. pictures!!!
The hair I asked for
The BLONDE I got (my facial expression shows my dislike)
How it is now, after fixing it!
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