End Result

I took the plunge and called my stylist today - she had an appointment open this evening and by 8 o'clock I was walking out of the salon feeling like a million dollars. I LOVE my new hair. It feels wonderful and is fun and youthful and makes my glasses look cooler and makes me feel less dowdy. Behold:

I do apologize for the hasty, camera-timer, poor lighting pictures. I'm a little excited. All I can say is "Yay!"

Highly Probably Outcome

So, I am feeling restless and adventurous and like I want to take a risk. My personal life doesn't really afford much in the way of adventure or risk-taking right now. Writing blog posts late on a Tuesday night seems to be about as crazy as it gets. Not that I'm really complaining - stability is a good thing. However, something needs to change. Which means I have been seriously toying with the idea of chopping my hair. It is really only chin length right now, so by chop I mean a few more inches. I have had it very short before, but not for quite some time. So I would like your opinions. Or at least hoping that if it is a really bad idea a voice of sanity will reach through the internets and virtually slap some sense into me. But first I should show you what I am thinking.

Above is the old standby of hair risk I have never quite been brave enough to demand. I have tried once or twice and been convinced by stylists that perhaps I should go with something slightly different, i.e. not so bold, short, or made for a face like Gwyneth Paltrow's. I understand their hesitancy because I obviously have a very different face, but they needn't have feared any retribution on my part if I ended up not liking it. Hair grows, I don't care that much, it is just hair, etc. Then I watched an Audrey Hepburn movie called How to Steal a Million which is worth watching just for a yummy, young Peter O'Toole and Hepburn's Givenchy wardrobe. But it also made me realize I really want to cut my hair.

I am a bit obsessed with her hair right here. I don't have an Audrey Hepburn face either, so I'm sure my stylist would balk, but I really do adore the short, faux-beehiveness of it all. Am I crazy? Here are some other angles:

Any opinions? I won't be able to make an appointment for a few days, so feel free to let me know what you think, dear readers. Although, it is a highly probably outcome. And if you want to see the hair in action, How to Steal a Million is streaming on Netflix.

Edited to Add: This is the current state of my hair. Just thought that might help with the opinion-making.

What A Difference A Week Makes

First of all, thank you to you all for your wonderful thoughts, prayers, cards, calls, good wishes etc.! I was at a personal nadir, and it helped to know there were people out there who care. I did do what ZB suggested and it feels like a load has been taken off of me. I still have a lot of responsibility and a lot of demands on my time, but some of the things that have been haunting me for the past couple of years have diminished. Part of it was just saying it (or rather publishing it) out loud. And I took some time to do things that make me happy. Like turn off my cell phone and read a book that has nothing to do with school or church or anything but my love of mystery novels set in England. I downloaded some music. I played. And I feel better.

Some of the things I enjoyed:

• Reading the incredible Doctor Who recaps in the archives at Television Without Pity. They have some incredible writing and make me want to re-watch the show starting with the Pilot looking for all the things I totally missed.
• The return of the rain and the end of the sunshine. I like that it hasn't gotten over 65 degrees for the past 3 days.
• Showing off the Bellingham area to my awesome family.

• The album 19 by Adele, specifically the song "Hometown Glory."
• Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Brownie mix.
• Fireworks.

Again, thanks for everyone's care and support - I appreciate it!

Existential Exhaustion

Here is the thing; I am tired.

Like, bone-deep exhaustion tired. I am tired of being dependable.

Tired of being someone who takes on all the responsibility for things, even when other people offer, tired of the accompanying guilt when I falter under the weight of that responsibility, or when I allow people to take one some of that responsibility and they struggle.

I am tired of being seen as dependable and smart and, therefore, intimidating.

I am tired, so existentially tired, of being constrained by other’s conceptions of who I am, of what I am, of who I should be.

I am tired of keeping all my crazy, less-than-dependable, less-than-nice thoughts to myself.

I am tired of being alone, of being the person that people depend on and the dull, endless ache of missing the one person I could always depend on, who would always be there for me.

I am tired of the guilt of feeling I somehow failed her, the stupid, ridiculous guilt of thinking I somehow should have been able to save her or to at least make it not so hard, not so painful, not so ugly and awful.

I am tired of being so consumed with my own pain that I don’t have the energy to get to know all the women I am now responsible for.

I am tired of not knowing how to help myself and thus unable to help them.

I am tired of feeling like every part of my life that truly matters is one epic failure after another.

I am tired of lying in bed not being able to sleep because my brain is full of worry and fear.

I am tired of waking up exhausted, of falling asleep in the middle of the day and having vampire dreams.

I am tired of being intimidated by life, by the unknown, by the idea that I am set up to fail.

I am tired of not being the girl I remember, the girl who would spin around in her Wonder Woman Underoos thinking she could conquer the world. The girl who could confidently pose in her Teela and She-Ra costumes and mean it. The girl who didn’t yet know that when people told her she was smart and strong and responsible it wasn’t a compliment; it was a sentence to being given more work, more responsibility, more to do. The girl who hadn’t yet realized that Wonder Woman and Teela and She-Ra and all the smart, confident, strong women she loved to pretend to be were alone, left to save their worlds by themselves. That such women were branded ‘intimidating’ and to have any sort of life outside their strong, confident, world-saving selves had to create cover identities in which they pretended to be less-than and that only then would they have friends, but not really because they weren’t who they really were. They were who people wanted them to be.

I am tired of not knowing how to be that girl anymore, of saying yes when I desperately want to say no and saying no when I should say yes.

I am tired of putting off finding how to be that girl.

So I am going to take some time to myself, to figure out things I should have figured out a long time ago. Which means I might not be around for a while and I might not answer phone calls and I might not be the person you are used to.

But I’ll be fine. Because I am always fine.

When I Do Not Want To Do Homework Anymore

I end up wasting time on YouTube when I should be sleeping. This is one I just found, which I very much enjoyed. Be warned, PG-13 thanks to a bit from Northanger Abbey.