I Used to Hate My Hair

For most of my teenage years, I sported the infamous side fringe. It was a security thing. I didn't like how unsymmetrical my face was. When I was thirteen, I begged for GHDs, and when I got them my best friend and I would spend each morning straightening the back of our hair, making sure there were no kinks, making sure the ends were curved in properly and not sticking straight down or out. Friday nights before youth group and my bedroom was a sauna, whatever the weather. If it was a special occasion, I would curl my hair, and I thought I looked amazing. Anything to transform myself from the natural flow of how my hair actually fell after washing and drying it. I was sure my hair was frizzy, kinky, and I had to mask that to make sure no one saw how ugly I was.

 

I don't know what changed, but when I got a bit older, my hair stopped being like that. Or maybe I stopped being like that. I grew out my fringe because it was too much effort and I didn't really like how it looked. I stopped reaching for my GHDs every day. It's funny to think that how my hair is now is exactly how I wished it could have been when I was thirteen. It's straight, it's smooth, soft and shiny. The ironic thing is, though, is that my hair is not what is 'desirable' in the beauty and fashion industry anymore. Now it's all about the naturally wavy, curly, effortless mess. That's what's 'sexy'. That's what's 'cool.'

But my hair isn't like that. It's dead straight. It's thick but it's flat, and it's pretty boring, plain, and like a lot of other people's hair. It's nothing special, it's just hair. But it's mine, and no one else has my hair. So what's the point in trying to make it something it's not? I stopped dying it a couple of years ago because it was too expensive to maintain, but it's a choice I am glad I made because I am in love with its natural colour.

I used to hate my hair, and sometimes I still do. It seems like a superficial thing to blog about, but hair is personal and I don't think I'm the only girl in the world to feel protected by it. Hair is beautiful, but it doesn't define you, your beauty, or your worth.

Being Human - New Year's Resolutions

December is a jam packed month. I love it. There is so much going on and it's always the most exciting time of year for me. There are now two days left of 2013 (what) and now that Christmas is done with, it's time to reflect on the year past and prepare for the new one coming.

Every year I buy myself a new diary and write a list of new year's resolutions in the crisp first page, but this year I have made a start in one of my old journals because I am feeling super organised. I start my new job a week tomorrow(!) and I want everything to go smoothly right from the start.

My new years resolutions are always the same: drink more water, eat more fruit and veg, do more exercise, read more, write more. This used to concern me - I shouldn't have to write these at the start of every year, should I? Surely after one year of keeping these resolutions I should be able to move on and not write them down again, year after year? But then I thought, I am never done with being fit and healthy. I am never done with reading and writing. These things mean a lot to me in my life. We always have room for improvement, and new years resolutions are important because they reaffirm that we are human beings with the drive and need inside of us to get better and achieve things, even if we never reach these goals.

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I see a lot of people on the internet going on about how New Year's resolutions are pointless. A new year shouldn't mean a new start - it's the same day as every other day. But it's not, really, is it? 1st January marks the start of a new year, and the opportunity to start afresh. As human beings we like that; we like to be given that chance, whether we see it through or not.

I remember browsing the shops last January and seeing a whole host of exercise DVDs on offer. Everyone knows after a few weeks of over indulging we try and get into a permanent routine of being fit and healthy, but it doesn't usually last. It made me laugh back then, but I'm considering getting one myself this year as I have avoided going out running for a good two months now. 

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The funny thing is, when it comes to making resolutions and keeping them, the enjoyable part is actually thinking of them and writing them down. Preparing for them. Getting that gym membership, going shopping for new trainers and a sports bra, writing this post, even. Sometimes, none of it comes to anything, but that's just human nature. Nothing changes remarkably when the clock strikes midnight on 31st December every year, but symbolically it does, and that's exciting - that is why we celebrate it every year.

January is a pretty depressing month. Thankfully, this one coming will mark the arrival of my sister's first baby and I am so excited. I hope the joy he/she brings will override the inevitable gloom that January usually brings, and I'll be even more determined to get better at reading, writing and looking after my body. What are your new year's resolutions?

Day 2: Facing the Fear - Growing Up.

To grow up is to be really brave. You’d never think it at fourteen. It’s what you always wanted. You would do anything to get out of that age. Away from school and all those pointless subjects. Live with your friends and eat sweets every day and it would be like one big sleepover except who would do the cooking and cleaning and washing and ironing?

If you’re lucky, your parents will teach you how to do these things, or you learn by just watching them. If you have older brothers and sisters, that’s good too. If you have younger ones, even better.

You should know how to do at least one of those things by the time you’re eighteen. Apparently that’s when you’re an adult.

Sometimes, I watch those wildlife programmes that try and be as clever and interesting as David Attenborough with their commentaries. I wonder how animals cope when they grow up. I bet they forget all about their mothers, until it comes the time when they have to be mothers, or fathers. How do they know what to do? Instinct. Must be. Yes. That’s it.

When I “left home” I had to say goodbye to my mum and sister in front of a crowd of strangers who would soon become friends, boyfriend and a load of people I’d never speak to again. I cried and it was embarrassing because I couldn’t go to the bathroom to wash my face or blow my nose I just had to stop crying without a tissue or anything and then hang out with these new people who were all quiet and on their mobile phones and a few of the more socially aware awkwardly making small talk.

I cried when I moved back home as well. Strange, that. I was like, in limbo between childhood and adulthood. Didn’t know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. Growing up, you get stuck in that sometimes. You get a bit lost.

University was like one big school trip and then I had to leave all my friends and a place I had grown quite comfortable in over the three years I had lived there. I could do whatever I wanted to do. I went to Tesco in my pyjamas and ate Mcdonald’s, Pizza Hut and chocolate one day and was sick the next day and cried and felt very sorry for myself in a big pile of duvets.

If it’s not fun, why do it? Was my motto. Actually it’s Ben & Jerry’s motto. A lot of mottos aren’t that good because you can’t apply them to every single situation in life, and it’s important that a motto should do that, otherwise, how is it a motto? I didn’t think about much when I was eighteen. It was easier then.

To grow up is to know yourself and to be comfortable being on your own. That means – I think – to know what you believe and what you think is right and wrong. To know who and what makes you happy and you at your best, and who and what does not.

Being comfortable on your own means you can sleep at night without having someone lie next to you, or for someone to be thinking about you, or talking to you, or texting you throughout the day. You are quite happy to spend the evening in alone, and equally as happy to go out and spend time with friends. You pretty much never get sad. Grown ups never cry.

I have been an adult for three years. I can cook a meal, wash my clothes, clean the bathroom, lock up at night, work and pay bills, all of that just fine. But anyone can learn to do that. There is something else that needs figuring out, and perhaps there are people who do not need to – perhaps it just comes naturally to them, as naturally as the instinct of animals leaving their mothers and becoming mothers themselves. Maybe they have something they don’t even realize they have, the natural ability to grow up.