I've decided that I have a bulimic personality. I don't mean that I eat giant amounts of food and then go to extraordinary lengths to purge it from my body. I mean I leave ends untied only to make them into complex sewing projects. Of course, this metaphor is problematic, as my stitching is rudimentary at best.
I let the dishes pile. I let my body get sick and stressed out. I let my roots grow and my ends split. And then I wash. I go on buying sprees of herbal supplements and hypoallergetic products. I get my hair cut and dyed for the first time in seven months.
Yesterday, I decided to purge Margot. True to this talent for taking destruction too far, I sought out to be the best Margot Tennenbaum this Halloween. Ugly-ass, ill-fitted faux-fur coat aside, I think I accomplished this with my hard-smoking filterlessness and my flatter-than-Indiana affect. I let my hair grow to shoulder length, put in more blond highlights. Like the "ironic mullet" and other jokes that go too far, I wore the role too well. The affect stuck. I still smoke too much. I am uncharacteristically distant from my Raleigh St. Claire.
Yesterday I dyed my hair from blond to brunette. A small act, but hopefully one that allows me to change other things as well. They had to put some red in the brown, see. It is the mark of someone transitioning. You need the red or else rich brown turns green and ashy. I have positioned myself in this red. Hopefully, the color of fire and blood and roses (and, too often, my face) will help me reconnect to feeling and breathing and circulating. And once the red fades, I will be closer to natural again. And hopefully, by then, I'll be more alert to roots and overgrowth.