Step One
I was going to start the post off with a lovely photo of my graying roots (please season that last phrase with a great big dash of industrial strength irony if you would be so kind) but decided at the last minute to go with Miss Flora Pink, Standing in The Corner looking Lost and Lonely in a Beseechingly Melancholic Way instead. You can thank me later.
I don't know how it is that you make sense of the world, but for me I do it by taking the known facts and throwing them on a canvas of metaphor and symbolism, moving everything about until some kind of a coherent story forms. Which brings us back to the graying roots.
I have a lot of them. Can't even tell you when they started exactly; I've been dying my hair since I was 16 and have never taken a lot of notice of what was going on underneath all that colour. I've been every shade from black to blonde, and it used to be a lot of fun. Now, not so much. Now it feels more like just another covering up of a part of myself that I had decided somewhere along the way wasn't acceptable in polite society. You can see where this is going.
I'm growing those babies out. I'm growing them out as an outward symbol of an internal revolution . I'm growing them out as a physical amulet against the times my courage will inevitably falter in my resolve to become the person, the whole person, and nothing but the person I was born to be. I'm concerned I'll look a great deal older than I need to, yes. I'm certainly not about to give up on taste, and style, and really cute shoes. But the looking old thing is not enough of a reason to keep me from showing my true colours anymore.
I think I just heard some kind of cell door open up somewhere.
(I think I also heard Cyndi Lauper burst into song during some kind of pre-teen eighties flashback, but that's not nearly so poetic so I won't mention it.)






