Color War

Tomorrow I am dying my hair.

This may seem rather inconsequential, an every day event for some, but for me it is quite ground-breaking. It is less an attack on my natural brown locks, sucking all life and color out of them, and is more an attack on my fear of change.

I am deathly afraid of change.

As a tween, when most of my friends were being shipped away to sleep-away camp, I was at the milder day camp, ensuring the fact that I would come home every afternoon after arduous hours spent capturing the flag, having Color Wars, and learning how to make friendship bracelets and see my family. I LOVED CAMP. I was AWESOME at camp. And yet, I never was able to take the leap to sleep-away camp when that time came. I tried it once, for one summer, and was miserable. I was so homesick it hurt, I didn’t make any friends I liked, I was consumed with finding my first boyfriend at 11 years old (and failed even more miserably), and I would go to the nurse’s office everyday hoping they’d find some illness and have to send me home. What’s really sad was that I did eventually get sick and had to leave but it was the day before the program ended and I had to miss the only fun night of festivities they allowed.

Why am I ranting about camp? Well, my fear of sleep-away camp was really my fear of change in a different package. I was afraid that I would go away Tootsie Woo and that I would come back 4-8 weeks later as different Tootsie Woo, a girl changed by awesome camp experiences but unrecognizable to my family. At 11 this fear consumed me and kept me from living out other experiences I was afraid would make me different from how I was before.

And though I have done so much between then and now, and I’m talking about moving a distance of 3,000 miles 4+ times in my life, by the age of 22, I still have the same fear, always afraid that I would come back from wherever I had been and I wouldn’t be able to relate with my family, that all inside jokes would be lost, and that I would be totally alone. And now as a college graduate, life changing more than it ever did when I actually went to college, I finally don’t recognize the person who I see in the mirror every morning with mascara crusties along my eyes and tooth-paste dried to my upper lip.

I used to be so excited about what I was doing! I was an acting major (I haven’t shared that yet, have I?) and every day was incredible and full of opportunity! And now I am exhausted by the few things that I have to do and I don’t want to face the long journey up-hill that my career will be. So despite careful avoidance of sleep-away camps I have undoubtedly changed from the hopeful, ballsy undergrad into a cynical tired 20-something, and I don’t like it.

So now what do I do?

Answer: I dye my hair.

I am afraid of change, am I? Well, I am dying my hair to prove to myself that no matter how much I think I’ve changed, even if my outside appearance is different, I am still the same person I have always been. I am the vivacious girl who used to wear silver lipstick to middle school dances. I am the crazy chick who once chased a girl around camp with a broom because she slapped her. I am Tootsie Woo, brown or purple-haired.

I am going to abandon my chocolate-colored hair, that I have always had (nearly always) and I will join the blonde-haired elite to prove that I can continue to kick ass the way I’ve always kicked ass.

So here’s to proving myself wrong, 11 years later, and to rocking gold-locks! Who knows, maybe blonde’s do have more fun.

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