Best Personal Essay - My Hair

Amaris Ortiz

Pahomov

English 3

08 January 2018

My Hair

If somebody named a friend of yours, what’s the first word you would associate them with? People think of their friends and just automatically associate them with a quality or something they like.

For me, my memorable quality has always been my hair. One of the first things people thought of when they heard my name is “oh the short girl with the long dark hair." Growing up, I never thought of cutting it. I was always afraid of looking different if I changed to short hair. I would rather just avoid a possibly dangerous or embarrassing situation than face it head on. Except these were just assumptions in my head rather than actual dangerous situations. As I got older, I began to get tired of having the same boring long hair. I tried to get rid of this feeling by temporarily dying it colors like green or red just for fun. But even through these small changes I still felt like a needed a bigger change. The same change that I was once afraid of.

When I was about 10 years old, I was at my abuela’s house in Puerto Rico and a conversation came up about my hair. It was late at night and we were all sitting around in the living room watching TV before heading off to bed. My family was asking if I wanted to continue growing my hair and me, being the person who didn’t want change, said yes. My aunt suggested trimming my hair for the first time so that it could grow healthier. She wasn’t a professional and had never cut hair before. It was a spur of the moment idea but I didn’t really mind. So she grabbed a pair of scissors and only cut about 2 inches off of the end of my hair. Trimming my hair really didn’t make a difference in how I looked because my hair was still super long. Everyone around me seemed to be making a big deal out of what happened. It was the first time I ever had my hair cut even the slightest bit. They suggested saving the hair for memory but I thought that was a weird thing to do. My dad jokingly asked me if my head felt lighter and soon enough we just went back to our nightly routine.

I never thought of this association with long hair as a bad thing until I cut most of my hair off recently. My hair was always something people mentioned in conversations. If I was meeting new people or making a new friend I’d be asked questions like “How long does it take you to wash your hair?” or “Have you ever cut your hair?” These are all things that people have been asking ever since I was younger and since I wasn’t good at talking to new people I didn’t mind it. After cutting my hair sophomore year, I didn’t know what people would identify me with anymore. I started to think that there wouldn’t be anything else that would set me apart from others. I never thought that would be something I’d worry about. I liked the new hair cut myself but I didn’t know how other people would react. I had gotten used to the association and constant questions. Now that people aren’t identifying me with my hair as much anymore, they make other comparisons. “You act just like your brother.”

Right after I cut my hair, the most common reaction I got was “Why?” Almost every person had asked me why I cut my hair or why I didn’t like having long hair. To this day, I still get asked this same question. People seem a bit disappointed when I give them my answer. “I don’t know I just got tired of it and wanted to change it up.” I repeated this answer to different people before I started to realize that they wanted a different response as if there was another reason as to why I did it or I just didn’t like my hair. I started to feel like I had to change my response for people or like I was forced to give them this elaborate story about my struggles with long hair. Of course there were certain things I didn’t like about it but I didn’t feel like my main reason for cutting it required a long deep story.

This summer I cut my hair even shorter than the first time. I was in Puerto Rico again and even though my hair was already shorter than normal, I told my mom I wanted a few more inches off. My mom was a bit worried at first because it was unusual for me to want to keep cutting it. I wasn’t worried about the comparisons people would make when I went back home or the questions I’d be asked, I just did it. I felt more in control of what I wanted after deciding to cut my hair even shorter. That feeling of being in control shows how different my situation was from when I was worried about what people would think to then deciding to focus on myself.

It seems like if a change is made, the people around it will try to adapt to it after a while. It was a shock to people that I cut my hair so short after such a long time of only trimming my hair. But after a while, they just moved on to making other comparisons. These small problems we build up in our mind really may not be that big of a deal to others. I thought it was a bad idea to cut my hair and have people constantly ask questions about why I did it but eventually, you remember that some of the changes you make about yourself are for you and not about the emotions of others around you. They will change or adapt and you will still be the same person you were before that change or even a better version of yourself no matter how big or small the change was.

If you personally identify yourself with something like “I’m known for having bright colored hair” or “I’m the funny one in the class” make sure you don’t get too wrapped up in your association. If you overthink a situation you may start to lose yourself. If you are in a situation where you want to do better or you want to be something else but you feel obligated to follow that thing you identify with yourself or others identify with you then maybe that isn’t really you. I loved my long hair when I was younger but I started to become unhappy when I felt like I was forced to keep it long. I am still that same girl, my hair just isn’t as long anymore. I decided to try new things and you never know, maybe I’ll decide that I want to go back to my long hair. I don’t want to become attached to an association so much that I feel like it controls my decisions.