A trip to the hair salon is always a gamble, and always a moment of reflection.
Just like the casino, you step into the hair salon, hoping to strike it big and have that moment of eureka! with your new hairstyle. Achieving that perfect hairstyle, however, is just like striking the jackpot. No matter how little or how much you pay, that one perfect hairstyle is so elusive and more often than not, you end up feeling disappointed.
We’ve all experienced it many a time in our lives; “The hairdresser cut my hair too short!” “This wasn’t the colour I wanted on my hair!” “My hair looks totally out of shape!” “My haircut sucks!”
For the first time in 1.5 years, I decided to make a trip down to the hair salon for a proper haircut session. Now, other instances which involved trimming of my bangs don’t count; I’ve done so a couple of times within these 18 months, but for the most part, the crowning glory at my back remained untouched.
So much has happened within these 18 months. After my last session in January 2009, I had shoulder-length hair. After these 18 months, it was fast approaching waist-length. There were many split ends, my hair was always in tangles, my head was starting to feel increasingly heavy from the weight of the hair and I was always leaving behind trails of long hair strands.
I’m not sure why I put off making a trip to the hair salon for so long; of course, you can consider it a cardinal sin in the “Book of Hair Do’s and Don’ts”. Perhaps it was because my previous short hairstyle left me so traumatised, and growing my hair out in the longest length possible was a means of “making up for the lost hair”.
And so I finally decided to take the plunge and get my hair cut.
I watched as my hairdresser trimmed away meticulously at my hair, as the strands of my hair fell to the floor in constant motion.
It seemed as though all those events that had transpired within these 18 months were also falling through, finally about to be swept away with time.
What kind of memories, and what kind of events? You may ask.
They range from the trivial, to the more significant ones. This “crowning glory” of mine has accompanied me on various travel destinations, has had some men of the past run their fingers through, has accidentally poked a few people in their faces whenever I flicked my hair, and so on.
When those layers of hair finally dropped to the floor, it was as if closure was finally possible; there, those strands of hair lay, in their final resting place. There they were, waiting to be swept away. All the events of the past could no longer cling on to the hair, for some of the hair had already been snipped off. Yet, some memories still could, for only some of the hair had been snipped off, and not all. Those were the memories that I’d chosen to retain, and so they still managed to find a place in the remaining strands of the hair.
And then the act of shampooing sealed the closure; washing away some of the memories that I wanted to banish, and banished they were, swirling into the recesses of the sink.
Granted, my haircut was nothing drastic; it was merely trimmed to chest-length, with some soft layers thrown in from shoulder-length onwards.
But I emerged from the salon feeling absolutely triumphant, feeling lighter and walking with that extra bounce in the hair.
Yes, $35 was a gamble that paid off :)
