I had my hair cut yesterday. Really short, radically short. I’ve worn my hair long for more than three years now – at one point pinstraight rebonded and falling past my bra-line, at another with Lolita Carbon layers, at another just perenially in a ponytale Manang-style, but most often wild and dishevelled and free and getting entangled in places. Always long. I’ve been afraid of getting it cut until yesterday noon.
I choked back a sob and strangled a sigh when I heard the first snip of Jerome’s scissors (the stylist at Piandre). Like I wanted to stop him, to grab his scissors and run away and never come back. But I stopped myself and just kept on pinching the web of skin between my forefinger and thumb. Maybe it’s a cliche, but after the first traumatic snip, there is something liberating about watching the succeeding locks of hair float to the floor as they are chopped off from the rest of you. Every falling lock, a memory to be excised – one trip to the hospital, a bitter fight, devastating news, crying in the rain, words left unsaid, words carelessly said, moments of too-shy, moments of too-reckless, moments of too-anything, Samuel Beckett-inspired relationships, tumults and explosions and volcanic eruptions.
After the last fatal snip, I faced the mirror. My hair is short, my head is light, my face is thinner (yay!) and I feel…. giddy. The hair won’t fly with the wind anymore like it used to, but sometimes, neat is good too. Everything in place, with grace and not madness.
And — I know because I have tried — you can still dance in the rain with short hair.
Happy New Year to me. Happy New Year to you. Wishing you love and quiet and heartsongs forevermore.
Steady lang tayo, at tatahimik din ang mundo.
