Oh Those Teenage Years

I have never been one of those girls who are precious about their hair. One of those who only go for a trim, and maybe branch out for a few highlights in the summer months. One of those who clutch at their tresses and squeal if you threaten to cut off their ponytail while they sleep. 

Oh no... that was not me. I was the girl who cut off all her hair when she was 14 and realised that no matter what you threw at it it would grow back. And it was a proper cut, none of your bobs for me. This was a 'feel the bristles on the back of your head' kinda cut. I embraced hair products and threw away all of my scrunchies, hair bands and clips. I played a lot of sport at my pretty conservative school so my multicoloured nails and fingers full of rings were about as flamboyant and in your face as you could get.

Until I went away to college... 

I spent the end of my teens and early twenties throwing everything I could think of at it. See all the colours above? I have had each and every one of those colours at some time, with the exception of white blonde. That was only ever done to bleach down my black tresses so that every other colour in the rainbow might adhere to my impossible-to-dye hair. At one stage I even had tiger stripes in my hair, but that was more due to something going wildly wrong with a batch of bleach than by design. I liked it though and kept it for a month.

One summer I got so fed up with my hair and the heat that I got a friend of my mums to shave it all off with a blade 2 clippers and decided to press restart with it all... but that didn't last long and soon the blood red streaks began appearing through my crop again.

If you saw me now you would never believe that I was the girl in school with the jet black, spiked crop or the girl from college with the 'pink this week and red the next' look. When I turned 23 I realised that I didn't know what I looked like with long hair and set about growing it out... and growing out bleach sucks! A lot! So I reigned in my love of colour for a few years to see if I liked what I would see in the mirror with hair long enough to tie back.

And it's pretty nice. Different, but nice. Lovely in fact. But if you told me in the morning that I would have to cut it all off again I wouldn't bat an eyelid. It's only hair. It is not part of my identity or who I am. It is not how people recognize or describe me. It is just hair.

Are you one of those people who have a connection to your locks and refuse to change your style, a person who chops and changes it at a whim or somewhere in between? How much does your hair say about you?