Free As My Hair

I cut off all of my hair on October 17th, 2015. I had wanted to take the plunge for years, but had been held back by a few things:

1) My hair grows incredibly slow so if I didn't like my hair being short, I would live in torment for literally years before my hair returned to its former state. To be honest, I wasn't too worried about this one, I knew I would love my short hair even if I had to make myself.

2) My identity. Which was linked to my hair and had been linked to my hair since birth. The last time I had hair as short as I wanted to cut it now was when I was two years old. I'm twenty now. That's eighteen years of an identity formed around long hair.
         As a woman, I was worried I wouldn't be found attractive, or even worth the time of men if I cut off all my hair. Since I was a child, people had been telling me how much they loved my long hair, so I didn't know how they would respond if I cut it all off. All the ads aimed at my demographic featured women with long hair. It was the feminine ideal society had pushed upon me.

But then I realized none of that mattered. If anything, that was the reason why I needed to cut off all of my hair. Not knowing made it more imperative. I needed to know who I was without this core piece of my identity, this crutch I had been leaning on for so long.

Now I'm free to figure out who I am at my core, without all the crutches. Slowly, I'm taking away all the things I have leaned on my whole life to figure out who I really am at the center. And it is absolutely terrifying, but I cannot stop. 

-Randa