The Trauma of Hair

I really dislike being "normal" or the same as everyone else. I want to stand out from the crowd and proudly scream I'm a freak.

Well, maybe not to that extreme.

Anyway, one of the few things I really have control over is my hair. When my daughter was very young, my hair was shoulder length. Since I have very curly hair, it was mostly kept in ponytails so it wouldn't look like a hot mess.

When my daughter got older, I decided to chop it all off. I loved it. My daughter, not so much. My hair was finally short enough to look nice. No more afro for me! And I was fine experimenting with it. After all, it's just hair, right? If I hate it, it'll grow back.

Jump to last night. I finally decided that I was sick and tired of all my grey hair. Not to mention that it was starting to get embarrassing plucking the white strands at work. I had to get rid of them somehow!

Yuck.

 

 

 

So I stopped by Ulta on the way home and picked up a box of hair dye. Now...in reality, I want Sharon Osbourne's hair.

Isn't that GORGEOUS?

 But, for some reason, I have it set in my mind that my fairly conservative accountant boss would flip his lid if I came in with such an unnatural hair color. So I settled for the reddest box of over-the-counter hair dye I could get. This is where the trauma part comes in.

30 minutes is a really long time to wait

For those of you that don't dye your hair, you should know that the color that comes out of the bottle is not really the color that your hair will be after all your hard work. While I know this, my panic-riddled brain does not. So while I was waiting the 30 minutes for the super-red dye to penetrate my hair shaft, my brain had this conversation with itself:

"OMG. That is REALLY red."
"But you wanted really red."
"But this is REALLY REALLY RED. Is it going to look freakish? What if the boss freaks out and fires me because I look like a hoodlum?"
"The boss is on vacation for another week and a half. By the time he gets back, the color will have faded. Besides, it will not be that red after you wash the leftover dye out. It will be fine."
"But....but.....but....RED."

I almost gave in and rinsed my hair 10 minutes early, but I stayed strong. After the full 30 minutes, I rinsed my hair and properly conditioned it. Since I just towel dried it (since I do not own a blow dryer), I knew the color still wouldn't be true.

Commence Freak Out #2

It still looked really really red. Red enough that my brain went into overdrive again. It even got to the point where I pulled my husband into the kitchen, where the light is better, to ask him if I looked like a circus freak. He assured me that I did not. I did not believe him.

Once again, I had a mini-freak out this morning. This time I pulled my daughter into the kitchen, where the light is better, to ask her if I looked like a circus freak. She assured me that I did not. I did not believe her.

The final result

It wasn't until three different people at work told me that my hair looked good and they really liked the color that I decided that I did not, fact, ruin my life by dying my hair red. In reality, it's not even that red. Considering I didn't bleach my black hair beforehand, only my grey got colored. Instead of having grey hair, now I have coppery-colored highlights. I love them.

One day I'll have the courage to get Sharon Osbourne hair though. It just might take awhile to get there.