A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

          For months I stared behind myself as my lavender mane danced across my shoulders. Every mirror was a reminder of my favorite development and every picture was a hammer into the favorite part of my past framed for everyone to see. For hours I would study the best color schemes. Days I would spend practicing with curling irons. Weeks I would preen under the attention its beauty gave me. I would swear that bleaching every color from my roots was the best decision I had ever made, especially when I replaced it with the pastel that I let define me.

            Those days, I often found myself stationary for hours as I let the bleach eat at my roots. I found the hours spent in the hard backed chair in my kitchen a small price to pay to keep the magic at the top of my head. The undefined muscles in my shoulders would ache as I forced my arms upright just a few moments longer, finally reaching the last dark root. My scalp would burn, my eyes would tear, and my hair would fry. This, though, didn't mean much to me. Brittle strands meant little when I was rewarded by their hue so often. My hair and I were no longer separate. I believed myself to be a creative force that couldn't be stifled, and although this is an idea that should be celebrated, I let it blind me.

            Once more, I found myself in the small tiled bathroom. The chemical powder wafted itself up my nose and I tried not to sneeze the bleach powder all over the bathroom again. I watched as the powder mixed with the cream in the clear bowl and excitedly applied it to the small dark roots crowning my head. I was preparing for a large party the next day and I wanted to be sure my hair would look perfect in all the photos.

            By the time my brush had hit the last of the dark roots, I had lost track of time. The bleach had already been sitting in my head for nearly twenty minutes, I knew, but it had meant little if the outcome was majestically lavender. The roots, no longer their pure black, were slowly fading to yellow as the time crawled by. Determined for lilac perfection, I applied another two layers of bleach on my lightening roots, knowing that if I couldn't get my hair to white, there was no point in dying it at all when the bleach washed out.

            Allowing myself to forget the burning on my scalp, I settled in with a novel whose name I can't recall now. I want to allow myself the luxury of believing that the novel was so horrible it doesn't warrant any fond memories, but the realization that little mattered to me except my lilac crown has come to me since then. Even when I was reading, the very idea of having my hair exactly as I wanted was distracting. Little passed the barriers of my mind to matter more than the way I could get the pale strands to cascade over my shoulders in heated curls or the beautiful contrast between my dark brows and their cotton-candy spun counterparts.

            Long after the burning had stopped and many chapters through a long-forgotten book, I moved myself from the kitchen to wash out the bleach and dye the rest of my hair back to lavender. Years later, I remember carefully inspecting each section on the top of my head before I would wash out the chemicals. Any dark root had to be carefully extracted and bleached from existence.

            But, that day, I had covered every inch with the thick chemicals, and moved to the tub. The moment the water hit my scalp was always a relief, and today was no different. I tried threading my fingers through the roots to scrub away the residue, and found it difficult to get my nails through the hardened mixture. Scrubbing now, I felt the paste give away and start to wash into the bottom of the tub. As I continued to scrub my roots, I felt them give into the webs of my fingers. My hands were coming away with clumps of hair woven between their fingers, the strands like straw stuck within the confines of my unwilling hands.

            Heart in my throat, I continued to wash away the bleach, making my way towards the back of my neck. Every time I moved my hands away from my head, I found them nearly invisible beneath wet hair that wasn't attached to my head any longer. The moment I was finally able to watch my reflection crumble was long after the bottom of the tub was thick with lavender strands clashing with the pink of the tile.

            The girl in the mirror was not the same woman who stood in her exact spot hours ago. This girl had short tuffs of white hair scattered about her burned scalp. Amidst them were thin bands of lilac posing as a sharp contrast to the fried hair that ended incredibly close to her scalp. Her hand reached up to grasp them, and suddenly that girl was me. No longer was I the powerful woman with lavender hair, but a young girl who couldn't spare the time for anything other than what framed her round face. Who was I now that my identity lay at the bottom of that outdated bathtub? Was that were my happiness really deserved to lie?

            The rest of the house bustled around me as usual. Keeping behind the bathroom door I still couldn't find an emotion that stretched beyond my shock to take hold, and everyone laughed and talked like nothing had happened. I gingerly fingered at the ends just above my elbow. There were only a few strands that were still that long and I swept them over my shoulder. The rest of my hair rested in varying lengths about my head and I inspected all of them. Then, right behind my ear, lay a patch of black roots less than an inch wide.

            The sound that echoed through the small bathroom and filled the entire house was one of grief. The girl who stood in the bleach-stained bathroom felt she was not the one who was only there hours before, and it was her death the girl grieved as the lavender cloud that was once her crown slowly washed down the drain. I remember my mother rushing in amidst cries of dismay, for once I started I couldn’t get myself to stop. She combed through my hair, finding each broken strand as my eyes remained glued to my own reflection in the mirror. Although it was distorted now because somewhere between my mother running in and more hair falling to the ground I had started crying, and once that started I couldn't stop it either.

            In the days that passed, I passed mirrors and scowled. No one complimented my shortened cut. And, the remaining strands weren't curled to perfection. Instead, they were dyed brown before I could get the courage to cut the remaining uneven ends. The lavender strands lay at the bottom of the tub, and in that moment I knew that I laid there with them. It was with those lilac tresses sat my confidence and happiness, leaving me with nothing else to give except advice on dye brands and color-safe shampoos.

            So, thinking on the moment I looked in the mirror, hardly any hair left, I know that it wasn't only hair that broke off and laid in that tub. The girl who saw herself with hardly anything brushing her shoulders was going to be different than the one who used to, and in hindsight, the bleach did more than strip away color. It allowed for new, dark, growth to blossom underneath, as new happiness grew in for the girl who started over at the roots.