Month: May 2015

When I was in High School, I wanted red hair so badly. Not bright red, but a beautiful dark burgundy. Although I did want bright red for some time too. I tried my best to dye it, without bleach. It never quite worked out that well. It worked to do a strip or even the ends, but when I tried to do my whole head, it just gave it a red tinge.

I have never lost that desire, funnily enough. I always come back to it, and think that it looks gorgeous and always wishing I could find a way to do that to my hair. I know red dye is super high maintenance and washes out quite easily, so it needs to be done semi-frequently. And I have never got it done professionally (maybe my dream later on). I want to have it done professionally, but all the different techniques and shades I have done have all been practice, for knowing exactly what I want.

And I have been needing a change with my hair. I felt so stagnant, sort of just drifting and never changing. So I wanted to do something with it. I wanted to dye it, but it felt so…high school to me. It almost felt like it would undermine the image I have today and the style I have. It put me off dying my hair for a while and it made me sad each day to know I wanted to do something, but I had no idea what.

I don’t want to cut my hair, because I love the length. Maybe I could shape it, get some layers, but nothing dramatic. I used to keep cutting my hair long and short to give myself some changes, but I have grown it so long now, I don’t want to get rid of that.

So I finally decided to dye my hair. I don’t want my ideas of how people will perceive me to effect my own choices. I want to dye my hair, and I need to let that desire motivate my decisions, not about an image.

I think, perhaps, the reason why I associate dying hair with high school and youth is that in high school, when I was younger, I didn’t think that much about the risks. It was easier for me to jump full into the idea of hair. It didn’t seem as permanent. My image wasn’t something I used to be concerned that much with. I didn’t care if it made me look like something I wasn’t, I knew I would grow into it and it would become me. The decision didn’t seem like the big idea it is now. It didn’t seem permanent and it didn’t seem immature. It seemed like an experiment to see how I liked my hair, to change the outside, and the inside. When I dyed my hair it was because I was going through a change and I wanted my appearance to reflect that.

Nothing about that has changed. And I wish I had more of that mentality now. I’ve gotten fossilized about my appearance, thinking that a perception, an image, is very important to how I am perceived.

But I am going to dye my hair, in an attempt to gain back that attitude I used to have. The carefreeness, the ability to take risks, the necessity of change, and the lack of emotional interest in the weight of other’s perceptions.

I like to bake a lot for others, but it takes a lot of my time, my energy, my resources and you just can’t get around that.

For these reasons, and more, I feel very emotional when I give people things I have made. I want them to like it and to eat them. I get really hurt when people do not and just let it go to waste.

First of all, if it was going to go to waste, then I shouldn’t have made it. Second, it feels disrespectful to the time and effort I put into it.

I know that some would say that once you relinquish control over something then it shouldn’t affect you, that their waste doesn’t diminish the value of the gift, but that’s not how I feel.

I do feel it is disrespectful and it does hurt me. I definitely am not one of those people who works all the time and doesn’t have the time, nor am I just basking in free time. But it is an instant in which I have taken the time out of my day to make someone something with them specifically in mind.

And I think that should count for something. Share it, give it to some people, just don’t let the hard work of mine to go to waste.

Normally the distance doesn’t feel too far between me and my old world. Wait, that’s a blatant lie, it always feels like the longest distance in the world. And when I get really upset, about anything really ranging from mild to just inconsolable, I get reminded of how alone I am here.

How till now, there just aren’t any relationships here that compare. It feels like a dry oasis, and maybe during the day the dehydration hallucinations are enough, but as soon as there’s a moment of clarity, they all just disappear and then I’m the fool standing on a deserted island without food or a way to stay afloat slowly sinking.

I know theoretically that people are only a call away, but I feel the distance. I feel the fact that it isn’t as instant as before, that I can’t just see them when I go home, or that I can’t just chat with them on the way home from the bus, or while going grocery shopping.

My whole world has changed, and it does feel like a long distance back there. And when the bricks of the new world crumble, I’m thrown back into reality, in the middle of a hurricane alone.

But I’ve brought myself here, to stand here. And I guess you could argue that this feeling is my own fault, that I should have made more friends and worked on those relationships, that I should have explored more, that I never really embraced the change and the new world I find myself in.

But I still walk around and have moments where it feels like I’m on this alien colony and just feel this deep feeling that maybe I’ll never fit in.

I know it seems like I’m feeling sad and melodramatic, and I’ll give you sad, not melodramatic because, honestly, to varying degrees all of these feelings do reside within me. Sometimes it’s easier to deal and to stay positive and keep going. Because if there’s something I am good at, it is moving forwards and shutting myself down.

I had contemplated a lot before exposing this much of myself to this blog, but I thought, why not? It is mine still and while the words cease to belong to me when others read them, these feelings still exist within me.

In the past, I have been really great at shutting down emotional parts of myself, breathing, being occupied, and moving. It’s  probably easier than it should be. But for some reason, it’s one of my first reactions to cope with.

I know this post isn’t happy and it doesn’t make me happy to write it, maybe relieved. But this isn’t how I feel a hundred percent of the time, it’s mini waves and this is just a moment where I am in the undertow.

It’s also written for the future, so even when you’re reading this, things may have turned up. But the undertow seems to always be the danger and ever present, in danger of being sucked in. And it seems like this is true for me too.

I have an obsessive personality. (Why do I feel like all these blogs do sometimes is just confess things that are wrong with me? Maybe a note for the future to look at).

Anyway, when I can’t find things, I go crazy. I actually do. I look everywhere, almost crying. And the feeling that invades my body is a lack of control and failure. Because I feel like in general, I have succeeded if I know where things are. And when I don’t, then I have failed.

I guess my life would be a lot less stressed and optimistic if I could redefine what success and failure means. But that’s a task that is larger than a blue whale. But I suppose a lot of things do boil down to that….a topic for another time.

But another feeling that I get is of failure. Both of these feelings I really hate obviously. I honestly don’t know where I was going with this post.

For my blogs I just throughout the day and week write down in a note on my phone brief tags that are supposed to help me remember some rant or thing I wanted to share and 99% they do exactly that.

But then there’s today when they don’t, which must just be related to my mindset, because when I wrote the tag, I remember thinking that this would be so easy to write.

So I guess I’ll just recount the incident which prompted this tag.

The other day, I was trying to leave for school and couldn’t find my favorite ring. It didn’t help that it was from the US and that my mom got it for me, which makes me even more crazy about finding it because these things from my mom mean a thousand times more to me than just normal things, and things from the US obviously more since I can’t really get more of them and they are a limited commodity. So I couldn’t find them, and the reason is that I have been moving bags a lot just to fit the situation, and in the move I just couldn’t remember where I placed them, and even more so the bag I had put them in, was used for school and wasn’t at the apartment with me. Which eliminated any chance of me finding it, even though I looked in every bag and even in the box of bags in case they fell out. I was so upset, I was late to a lunch date and didn’t even want to go because it made me so sad and crazy. It’s like when you want to use a word that’s on the tip of your tongue but it eludes you, like all words do when you need them. Even more so, it had been only two days ago, and I felt like I should have remembered, but it was like a black hole in my memory, which was even more upsetting. Sometimes I feel like I move too fast or am too preoccupied with the thousands of lists in my head to remember things, like small memories, and it frustrates the heck out of me.

So if I do ever remember what I was thinking, I will either post another, or just edit this one!

You just gotta bear with me.