The Nest

To Cut or Not to Cut...

Posted Wednesday, December 19, 2007 10:24 AM

I used to have the longest, most beautiful hair ever.  Sigh.  It floated to just below my butt and I would spend all day flipping it around, sticking a pencil through it, or just playing with the ends.  I would get compliments on it wherever I went.  One year, my friends and I made a music video at Great America, and sometimes I watch it just to see my hair flying around, shaking and shimmering.

Then I got old.  And my long, beautiful hair turned into a rat's nest that I hated to brush.  It fell into my eyes and took forever to make it look shiny.  I pulled it into a ponytail everyday and stopped doing anything to it.  After I graduated college, it seemed like a natural step to cut off my locks.  It was a new beginning, a new me.  I was letting go of my childhood.

I had beautiful hair again.  It barely fell to my shoulders.  I would curl it everyday, and when I got done waiting tables, I could go straight to the bar and my hair still looked great.  It was shiny again, I could flip it again.  When my boss told me my hair was getting too long to leave down, I made another appointment to take a few more inches off.

Then I got engaged.  And I imagined having beautiful, long curls on my wedding day.  Or at least a complicated, twisty, curly up-do.  My old-fashioned fiance keeps saying how he likes my hair long.  And so I started growing my beautiful, short hair out again.

Now, a year later, it's to my shoulder blades.  And I hate it.  It's back up in a perpetual ponytail.  It's lackluster.  It hangs in my eyes.  I can't do anything to make it look nice.  Is it really worth another year of having bad hair, to maybe have great hair on one day?  Yes, it may be the happiest day of my life.  But what about all the days leading up to it?  Shouldn't they be happy too?

So here's my quandry.  Do I keep growing my hair, hope it reverts back to it's once-beautiful fullness, or do I chop off a year's worth of growth, and just say, "Screw it, I'm looking pretty right now?"  Do I tell my fiance he's wrong about my long hair, and I just plain look better with shorter, healthier hair?  Can I be just as happy on my wedding day with an short up-do, some short curls?  That is the question.