{Tattoo by Rich at Kapala Tattoo}

The decision to get this tattoo took me a long time to come to. My last tattoo experience was hard. My koi fish was done on the part of my back where my chronic back pain comes from, and at the time I wasn’t doing much to keep it under control. About twenty minutes into the colour, I lost it- the pain went off the richter scale and the muscles in my back started spasming. I ended up having to leave, let it heal, and did two months of physio and massage and yoga to get the pain into a place where it was manageable. I went back and sat through the colour, but for a long time the sound of the tattoo machines made me feel like I was suddenly seasick. I knew that my shoulder pice was something I wanted, I wasn’t sure that my body could handle it.

And of course, my questions didn’t end there. While I loved the idea of having a big visible tattoo in theory, I wasn’t sure how I the old parts of me would mesh with this new part. I see other women with visible tattoos all the time and I adore them. Their art suits them perfectly and they’re these amazing, larger than life indie sirens to me… but until I saw the finished stencil, I wasn’t sure that I could be that kind of girl. What if I got it and it didn’t suit me? What then? My imagination was caught up in a tug of war between what I wanted and imagined worst case scenarios right up until the appointment.

While part of me wanted some kind of a litmus test so I would know that this was the right thing, I knew that all I could do was dive into the experience and see what happened. I was incredibly excited to see it, but prepared to pull the plug if I didn’t like the art… and then if I did love it I was just going to pray my shoulder didn’t feel like my back did last time around. And if it did I wouldn’t make myself be brave, I would just sit still and wait for it to be finished. So at least I had a plan!

When I pulled up to the shop, I still felt shaky (because I’m me) but I took a deep breath, got out of the car, and went in.

I met my artist, who was warm and quick to laugh, put Serenity into the DVD player… and the shop broke into a faux opera rendition of the firefly theme song. When I could stop laughing we did the first part of a flower and I knew that I would be fine. The art was beautiful, the pain felt normal, and I was clearly with my people.

On the other side of it, I didn’t need to be so concerned! I’m in love with it and the experience was fabulous. I’m actually excited to have the colour done, and for someone who’s not made of tough stuff that says a lot. And indie siren or not, I think it suits me perfectly. It’s healing beautifully and the colour will be finished at the end of June. I love how big it is, and that it’s a partial sleeve. I love that it’s old fashioned and feminine, and I love how it peeks out from my shirts and dresses. I’m enamoured.

My cherry blossoms are a reminder of the west coast, of how short our time here together is and how beautiful it is while it lasts. And it’s a reminder that no matter what is happening now, the whole world can change by spring. I feel like its always been a part of me, I’ve just been waiting to meet it.

You can see close ups here & here, and if you have any questions please leave them in the comments, I’d love to answer them.

In keeping with the Japanese look that I already have (and my love affair with Vancouver), I’m going to be getting cherry blossoms done in an old fashioned looking illustration style.  See? I’m terrible at expressing myself ideas about visual things. This is a little of what I brought in…

I love the placement of Mandi’s tattoo, the old fashioned look of the illustration in the top left and the airy, delicate feel in the blossoms at the bottom.

{from: + + +}

I don’t like designs that are overly sharp or cartoonish, that emphasize the branches over the blossoms and that are spread out over a really large area.

{from: around the web}

I won’t get to see the sketches until the day I go in and I can barely wait! I’m going to a new shop this time and am working with the owner who seems to think it’s a neat idea, and gets the style that I’m looking for. It should be four or five hours all told. Deep breaths!

Everyone seems to love or loathe tattoos, what’s your take?

I rarely see ones that I want for myself, but I just love ones that really suit their owners

I’m not someone who pushes their beliefs or habits onto other people, for the record I think that kind of stuff is just hopelessly boring. I also have no interest in becoming a food blogger, but when I posted and tweeted about our split kitchen the one big question I got back was definitely: “….thanks for the vague bullet points but seriously, HOW do you manage?!” and in posting about my vegan challenge there have been a lot more questions.

So for those people who would like a little more information, I’ve decided to line up all of my rabbits beside all of my hats to lay it out: if you want to try being vegan or vegetarian for a little while, this is what I (someone who is not at all qualified to give any advice on this or any other topic- but that’s what makes this fun, am I right?) would recommend:

Know Yourself

If you like creamy foods and you’re going to be going vegan, find creamy foods (caramelized onions, wilted spinach, avocado) that can replace them. If you’re going to try out being vegetarian and think you might miss the flavour of meat then find recipes that aren’t short of interesting new spices. If you love baking, plan to bake every week (side note: vegan baking is SO LOW FAT you need to try it, it’s stupid good) so you don’t feel deprived.

Identifying what might cause you to slip up and planning to meet those needs is a great way to make sure this is a fun challenge, not a way to feel guilty for a month or so. Once you figure this out you’ll know what to look for in recipes and will have a much easier time with the whole endeavour.

Find some recipes you can be excited about

Before you start changing how you eat, look around the world you’re stepping into. There is so much good food out there! These are some great resources I would recommend, just bookmark & print off (or turn the corners on) anything that you find appetizing:

Recipe Blogs

Where you already search – Vegetarian cooking is mainstream these days and sources that you might already visit for recipes will all have vegetarian recipes to offer. Try Martha Stewart, Smitten Kitchen, Epicurious, Food Blog Search, All Recipes or anywhere else you look for recipes by searching “vegan” or “vegetarian”. You’ll be surprised.

The Gluttonous Vegan Loves YOU – This is my favourite. A carefully and beautifully put together blog featuring a weekly recipe and a vegan for a week challenge where the author meal plans for you. A very rare find, written by a passionate and caring twenty something. If you like food in general you should read this blog, her work is creative and wonderful. It will get you thinking. {link}

Vegan Yum Yum - Before it was a cookbook, it was a blog and a beautiful one at that! Back after a little break you can peek into the wonderful recipes before you buy the book. And if you like the blog, you’ll want the book. I could just cuddle mine it’s so good. {link}

Cookbooks

The Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas - This is my favourite. It has nutritional information for everything, meal planning suggestions and tips for getting picky eaters (children or partners…) to go for veggies. {link}

Vegan Yum Yum - Incredibly simple recipes, we got this as a gift and it was the first cookbook that Mister has ever gone through and wanted to work from. A testament to how amazingly tasty and simple the recipes are! {link}

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World - Cupcakes that are good for you!! Another book that I’ve been cooking from for years after receiving it as a gift. Creative and tasty offerings that are pretty guilt free {link}

Take a step back

If you flip through these sites and just don’t see anything you like? This isn’t for you. There is no shame in that! Nothing is right for everyone & this is no different.

Plan a week

1. Take a look at all the recipes you’ve flagged as being tasty and identify gaps. Here are some good questions to ask:

Will this give me enough protein? This is kind of the only hope you have of feeling full. Check your recipes for these ingredients, they’re what you want, I promise. Something as simple as adding chick peas to your side salad can make a big difference. If you skip this, you’ll be tired all the time and eventually your doctor will send you for blood work and force you to eat chickens. Take care of yourself or else, okay?

What kind of colours are on my plate? This is a great fast check to make sure you’re getting a range of vitamins and nutrients, and you can find a list of colours you should look for (+ explanations) here.

2. Eliminate anything with elaborate, crazy ingredients unless you are a generally crazy and elaborate person. This is a big change! Try a scary recipe here and there, but you don’t need to raise the stakes to an unreasonable level. Simple, fast food is what you’ll need during the week and either the vegan or vegetarian cookbooks I’ve listed above are your best bets for this. If you don’t want to commit you can always see if they’re at your local library.

3. Make a meal plan!

If you don’t currently meal plan, this easy weekly meal planning method is very similar to how I’ve been doing mine lately. It breaks new recipes down to the ingredients you’ll need to buy at the grocery store and makes sure you don’t go home hungry. Don’t forget snacks! Popcorn is vegetarian and popsicles are vegan. *taps nose*

Don’t be a hero

I don’t know about you, but unless someone else was doing all of my cooking I doubt I could pay anyone to care about what I eat. So since we’re not trying to prove anything to anyone? Just take it slow. To go vegan for a month I took a solid two weeks to ease into the change, and if you eat any meat at all I would work in steps: start having a filling vegetarian breakfast (fruit shakes are easy!) and once that’s second nature add in vegetarian lunches. Once you have a rhythm add dinners in for half the week, and then into being fully veggie over a period of weeks. If you feel ambitious, repeat with vegan substitutes.

The reality is that this is a lifestyle change, you have to re-learn how to read menus, labels and recipes. Vegetarians? Kiss your caesar salads good bye (anchovy paste!) and vegans? Milk solids are hiding in the most unsuspecting snacks. These aren’t slight changes and rushing it might be more dramatic but it will also set you up for frustration and even worse- hunger.

I hope this helped, but I’m winded!
I think that puppy pictures and Mix CD’s are in order next week.

Have a good weekend Sparrows, and stay dry out there!
Is it monsoon season where you live too?

Being vegetarian has always been pretty easy for me, especially since it’s what I grew up with, but over the past year I’ve gone from being a healthy vegetarian who watches her protein and vitamins to a carb-etarian who lives on potatoes and pasta. I’ve tried to be healthier, I participated in a six week health blogging challenge and focused on making progress with my habits. But all winter I knew that how I was eating wasn’t healthy, and I had to get back to viewing my healthy vegetarian eating as something fun and manageable instead of as a hassle.

What better way to force some perspective than taking on the ultimate hassle? So in February I put the butter under lock and key, and I tried out being vegan for 30 days.

Expectations vs. Reality

When I started out my main expectation was that it was going to be kind of terrible, that I would crave dairy, and that I wouldn’t be able to eat out. I started aggressively meal planning and trying come to up with new ’stand by’ meals so I would have something (anything!!) to fall back on. For the first few days, food was a battle. I’d eat what looked like a great salad and some fruit at noon and be ravenous by two. I would eat dinner and be hungry again in an hour, and heading back to the kitchen for toast, baking or pretzels so I could feel full.

I hit the grocery store again, this time with protein in mind and bought some tofu and those “shake and bake” pouches to make tofu strips for salads and sandwiches. I started adding caramelized onions and avocados to wraps when I wanted a creamy taste, and found that I was more full and didn’t miss cheese that way. I stopped eating spinach only in salads and started wilting it to add some heavier food to my meals. I made corn fritters, spicy chickpea and tomato soup, garlic & sun dried tomato (whole wheat) pasta and even started having fruit and tofu shakes every morning.

While eating out was harder than it had been before, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I focused on going out for sushi (Mmm… avocado rolls) and mexican food (hold the sour cream, double the guacamole) as each was easy to make vegan friendly.

I was expecting it to be awful and hard, and to feel deprived but it turned out to be alarmingly, frighteningly easy, especially with some vegan brownies tossed in the mix. I would have never guessed that I was anywhere close to being vegan, but finding out that we didn’t even own snacks with milk solids in them made me think twice about what I seem to think veganism is about.

The results

When March 1st hit and my challenge had ended, I ate a silly amount of perogies with sour cream and slept like a small child. But knowing that carb & dairy laden food is off my “forbidden” list, I don’t think I can feel good about returning to my old ways. Against all odds, being vegan just made me feel way too good! I’ve heard hype about the weight loss (um, hi) that comes from being vegan and while I didn’t see a lot of that, I just felt better in my body than I had in a long time. Even scarier, a month off of butter and cheese has made everything dairy taste strange to me. Sour cream isn’t palatable anymore, and butter is nice in small doses but generally heavy and overwhelming. This from the girl who is a cheese aficionado!

Last month re-set my perceptions around the foods I like, and it also changed my expectations for how my body should feel. It was a lot like a detox, a little challenge at first, and then suddenly I had new habits left, right, and centre. For now I’m going to stay 80% vegan and see what happens over the next year, but either way I’m glad that I gave in to my curiosity and gave this a try.

Have you had any food epiphanies this year, or have you tried an experiment like this?

ps – recommended food blogs, cook books and recipes for tasty vegan and vegetarian food will be up on Friday. Stay tuned!

It was tribal and claustrophobic in the way only family can be, and as you can imagine that kind of an environment bakes rebellion into your system. So when I graduated, I did what you might expect: I took a year off to regroup, broke up with my awful high school boyfriend, cut off my hair, pierced my nose and started stretching my ears to a zero gauge.

I didn’t want to be a girl from That School and I didn’t want to go to school with Those Girls. I needed a clean slate, and if I couldn’t bring myself to move away I would be a new version of me. Only the new version of me was just as shaky and uncertain as the old version, and just as confused.

I don’t know how many people end up having their mom beg them to get tattooed, but mine did. My mom is crazy and wonderful, definitely not your normal mom. She got it into her mind that what would knock all of this rebellion out of my nineteen year old system was simple: I just needed to get a tattoo.

I started pulling together ideas and trying to find something that had meaning to me, that wouldn’t be trendy or strange when I was an old woman. I thought about the year that had put me in this strange and upset state. It had been so difficult I was nearly pulled apart.

I found out that I’d been repeatedly cheated on by my boyfriend of two years, who had spent the previous six month constantly accusing me of being unfaithful. He’d started telling me who I was allowed to see and who I wasn’t, in so many words. He was making threats. I was afraid of him and deeply sad all the time, but finally had the courage to break up with him. He retaliated by making up awful stories about things “I’d said” about my friends, until I had no friends left and was almost completely without support. He started following me, showing up at my house at all hours of the day and night, showing up at my friend’s houses, at restaurants when I was out to dinner. He was always sitting in the background to let me know he knew where I was. My phone rang all the time, and he would show up at my mom’s house, screaming and pounding on the door until we had to call the police. I was rocked by panic attacks constantly, and was eventually diagnosed with a completely out of control panic disorder that paralyzed me to the point of not wanting to leave the house.

It was months and months of heartache followed by months and months of fear. I became a paper shell of a person who might blow away or burst into flames at any moment. My mom looked into my eyes and told me we would get a restraining order, a therapist, and a tattoo*. And in the mean time she would make me some tea.

I tried to find an image that would reinforce everything I knew I needed to become: strength after being broken, peace after being afraid.

I’ve always been hypnotized by koi fish. I could stay at a pond for hours peering into their funny faces and looking at their sleek, beautiful bodies. They grow to be so large and so old, always wrapped up in the hush of underwater.

I took Japanese at school until I was in grade eight, and in their legends the strongest koi fish can swim upstream against anything. Eventually it swims to the top of a waterfall where it leaps into the air, and in the mist is transformed into a dragon. When I was nineteen I knew that I needed to be a dragon girl, no matter how scary that process would be. I knew I could make  a decision about who I wanted to be: the nervous girl at the back of the room, or someone whose happiness radiated out through their every motion and word. I could be someone joyful and unapologetic if I worked on myself every single day for as long as I could see into the future.

This May I’m turning twenty five, and I’m closer to being that girl than I ever could have imagined. In a couple of weeks I’m meeting to talk to my artist about another piece (this time on my shoulder, the chronic pain in my back is too bad to have this built on) to celebrate how far I’ve come.

Every now and then I think about what these drawings on my body will look like when I’m an old woman. Will I still like them? Will they still be me? But when I get to the heart of it, I’m not worried.

They wil be perfect because they are a part of me. An old and creaky, belly laughing dragon girl is still a dragon, after all.

{get a closer look here & here}

*While I spoke with the police a number of times, I was too anxious and overwhelmed to go through with getting a restraining order, and I can’t tell you how many times I wish I had gone through with it. Talking myself out of what my therapist and the police recommended was another part of justifying my boyfriend’s behaviour. If you are in an abusive situation, please seek the help and the protection you need to feel safe.

But maybe you and I have just met for the first time to go out for lunch, and I place an elaborate order like “club sandwich, no meat, and could you add to caramelized onions and jack cheese from that other sandwich onto it?” and we start to have a conversation that goes like this:

You: “Oh, are you vegetarian?”

Me: “Yep!”

You: “Oh cool! How long have you been at that?”

Me: “Um…well, since I was six years old.”

You: “WHAT? WHY?”

(Don’t worry. By this point I can give my speech without notes.)

My mom went vegetarian when I was six. She didn’t have a parade, but eventually I noticed she wasn’t eating the same food as me and I asked her why, and she said “animals are my friends and I don’t eat my friends”. It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world, so I asked if I could stop eating the star shaped chicken stuff and tuna that I ate, and my parents said that was fine. In terms of major life decisions it couldn’t have been more of a non-event, I was so little that I was barely eating any meat at all. I just stopped, and unless I was having sandwich meat waved in my face by the boys at my elementary school I didn’t really think about it.

Growing up in my house, what you ate was never about right or wrong, it was just a fact: some people eat different things and some people are comfortable with different things. When it comes right down to it, I guess I started being vegetarian because I never really learned how to eat meat.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t been curious. While I’ve never tried red meat, I’ve had pizza where I got a slice of peperoni instead of cheese (oh my gosh, gross) and I’ve tried chicken once. Each time I felt sick after trying meat- my body isn’t used to it and my palate isn’t either. Even cooked chicken tastes rubbery and charred to me, like what I would imagine somethings body to taste like. Beyond not liking how it tastes I find the way most animals are raised and slaughtered is just straight up awful. If I was used to eating meat I would buy local organic meat, but I’m not used to it so I don’t. I’m healthy now so my logic is why bother eating something that I don’t like and that makes me sick when I’m fine without it?

While to me this seems straight forward, you wouldn’t believe how many friends, employers, and clients have refused to accept “I don’t like it” as an answer. They barrage me with questions and get defensive. They start explaining their eating habits when I haven’t asked. I’ve had well intentioned friends freak out and try to re-order their meals so they don’t offend me by eating meat in front of me (ps – who are the vegetarians that scare people into this kind of behaviour?? Please cut it out, you’re embarrassing the rest of us!!) and I’ve had supervisors drill me about my family history, how I grew up and my politics over a working lunch.

I get it.  People anticipate that I’m going to become a pushy salesmen about it, but once they get to know me and how much I love good food they start to see how my eating choices aren’t an issue, they’re something I’m positive and excited about. And they’re certainly not about anyone other than me.

Our Split Kitchen

After the big “Why?” the next thing that people want to know is how Mister dealt with becoming vegetarian when we moved in together. The answer is easy: Mister is not vegetarian- we have a split kitchen. I would never ask him to change something so fundamental as what he eats, and he has a slate of severe food allergies to contend with (corn, soy, fish, all nuts…) that mean he’ll never be vegetarian and will always have an Epi Pen. When we first moved in together we were worried about how it would work, but after the first month it became clear: cooking in a split kitchen isn’t that hard. It makes you think about cooking, and when you’re thinking about what you eat and how you make it, cooking can be a lot of fun.

How we eat is very straight forward, and it helps us to keep cooking fun and manageable:

1. We meal plan in a way that’s not a hassle. Mid-morning on Saturday we sit down and brainstorm for ideas. If I’m feeling uninspired I hit FoodBlogSearch.com and see what’s out there. Any ingredients that we know we don’t have goes on the list, and then we do a sweep of the kitchen basics and make sure we have enough of what we like to stock (milk, eggs, sugar, spinach, chickpeas, deli meats, tofu, black beans…). Ta da! Our grocery list is done. After a little streamlining this takes 5-10 minutes, or 15 if I decide to languish on food blogs.

2. We have a store of fail safe meals up our sleeves, and always stock the ingredients for them. Always. “Um….pizza?” is a common phrase in our house, especially if mid-week we’re getting tired of cooking. We have a pizza stone (you need one) and whenever we run out of dough I toss some together (15 min max), let it proof over night and then freeze it. As a result, making pizza only involves putting two pieces of dough into the fridge to thaw out during the day. We also always have stuff for croque-madames, Mexican, spicy tomato chickpea soup, and pasta. If we lived on a desert island I could subsist on these alone, and having them handy means we never have to think too hard if a recipe we picked out suddenly looks daunting mid-week.

3. We look for basics that can be built in stages so we can both eat how we like.This allows me to work from one recipe for the first half of cooking, and then split off into two dishes in the final stages of prep. Most soups and pasta sauces can be built like this, where we start with a veggie broth or a basic tomato or Alfredo sauce and at the last minute I split into two pots and add meat for Mister and tofu for me (or just leave mine as it is). Build your own pizza, Greek pitas, Mexican, melty sandwiches also fall into this category.

4. We cook like it’s Thanksgiving all the time because side dishes are awesome & everyone can eat them. Beyond our main dish we always have a couple sides, from beans, peas, potatoes, yam fries, to veg & non-veg appetizers, olive trays, rices and salads.

5. We understand the other person’s limitations. Mister used to hate veggies- but having them not over cooked and seeing that if you put butter on anything it tastes good he’s slowly come around. I am weirded out by cooking meat, but I have a morbid fascination with it and a sense that it’s kind of lame that I never cook anything meaty for Mister, so we both try to meet in the middle. It’s not a written agreement, it’s just our quiet way of trying to be a little adventurous.

6. I don’t cook scary or elaborate vegetarian recipes. A lot of veg. cookbooks have ingredients that I would love to try someday, but that day is not today. I don’t have time or energy after work to try to figure out how to use star anise in my dinner, so the only vegetarian cookbooks I buy are family cookbooks. These books cater to Moms who need fast food that their picky eaters will partake in. I have one that even gives alternate vegetable choices for some dishes based on common texture issues & has the nutritional information for everything. It’s my best friend.

Having a split kitchen isn’t the most straight forward thing in the world, but cooking with some restrictions isn’t as hard as it sounds. Now that I don’t have to grocery shop after work when I’m stressed and tired, it’s not a stressful thing. Add white wine to the equation- even less stress!

If you’re considering trying out a couple vegetarian meals a week, please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this kind of cooking is hard. It’s simple, healthy, way less expensive and if you have a partner who is hesitant you don’t have to count yourself out.

Do you have any tips for keeping cooking simple & still keeping everyone happy with dinner?

ps – I have a post for next month brewing on my vegan experiment, if you have any questions you’d like touched on please pop them in the comments below!

I’m quite fair, and my relationship with The Tan has always been a little tenuous at best.

In the summer I’ll come home with pink arms and nose from walking to the bus, which will go on until August when I stop turning pink, my we-were-Ukrainian-peasants-working-in-the-fields-four-generations-ago genes kick in an I am suddenly washed over by a deep sandy tan. Then in early October all the colour that has slowly accumulated in my cheeks washes clean off in one sitting and I’m back to a very pale & slightly pink square one.

This winter I actually went to the MAC counter and pleaded with them.

Kyla: “I need to find a bronzer or a shimmer – something that isn’t too dark but that will…”

Mac Lady: “Give you a little dimension, so you…you know………….don’t look sick?”

I still maintain that it’s only natural to look sick under mall lighting, for the record.

But the swinging between shades means all summer my makeup never works quite right – I end up mixing colours of anything I use and it’s had me thinking about tanning in general. Most of all: why do I do it?

I used to buy tanning minutes – I would slosh on the expensive tingly lotion and have the fans whip my hair around under the glowing lights while I wore impossibly small goggles. I would make sure I got a ‘foundation tan’ before going on holiday. I was queen of the SPF 2 tanning oil for years. Gradually, it has become less important to me, and last year it didn’t occur to me to tan before my wedding – I laid out on my patio with a moderate SFP the weekends, but taking transit and walking the puppies means that in the summer I’m outside a lot. A lot.

And I’ve started to notice things, like freckles on my shoulders and more freckles on my cheeks which I love, but have had me thinking. So this winter I made a decision: This year, I’m giving up the tan.

It’s a matter of philosophy, and this is my theory:

1. I have already had a massive 2nd degree burn on my face from tanning when I was 13 or so and it put the fear of God & sensitive skin in me.
2. I am in the sun a lot. Between the puppies and taking transit, I walk for about an hour every day and I run 2 – 3 times a week. That’s a ton of sun, and a ton of burning that I’ll suffer over summer. I will still get a little colour through sunscreen, I just won’t burn and re-burn constantly.

   And the biggie…

3. I’m so young!! At almost 24, I’m as attractive (in that just past teenage way) as I’m ever going to be. While tanning might make me marginally more attractive now, not tanning now will make my skin exponentially less destroyed when I’m in my 40s.

So when you see me in Vegas, un-tanned in my yet-to-be-bought bathing suit you’ll know it’s because I’m planning to be hot when I’m in my 40s. Call it smart or call it deeply superficial, just know that if you need SPF 50 I’m only a phone call away.

I’ve always liked the beach better at night anyways.

{images from the slyest fox & the evil money}

Before…

After…

I’m really enjoying the change & have banished my flat iron for a while. I’m not regressing if I’m rocking curly hair and straight bangs, am I?

Didn’t think so. It’s 80’s chic.

But I didn’t want people to make friends with someone who looked like the Old Me. The Old Me had a boyfriend who had been publicly cheating on her for six months before she broke up with him. The Old Me was wildly angry about her friends choosing him over her. The Old Me was always placating, accommodating, never standing up for herself. The Old Me had to hit the road, she had too much baggage.

I’d thought long and hard about how to get rid of the Old Me. My tactic was mostly superficial – I pierced my nose, got a tattoo to remind me that I was different and stronger, I was enrolling in university without knowing anyone I would be in classes with… but it wasn’t quite enough. I still recognized the Old me in my face and my want to change was so strong that it made me want to scream.

It was definitely the hair. What else could it be? It had to go.

I went to a friend of a friend at her cool urban salon. The walls were pink, exposed brick and mirrors everywhere, framed in by flat panel TVs. This place looked like somewhere The New Me would like. So I uttered the words that would banish the Old Me forever.

“I’m thinking a shaggy pixie cut.”

To my credit, I brought in pictures. I was overflowing with Mandy Moore & Elisha Cuthbert pictures. I said “pixie” but all of the photo evidence I brought suggested something 3″ long at the shortest. I meant something light and flippy. My friend of a friend talked to me about what I wanted & we agreed. She started cutting from the back, and I felt so much lighter! I could feel the Old Me falling away, like someone different would be revealed when we carved some of my length away.

She had cut about a quarter of my head and was working up towards the front when she had to step away away for a moment. I turned my head to admire the first glimpse of my new haircut…..and my hair was a quarter of an inch long.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED HERE?!!

My stomach jumped into my throat, I was dizzy, reeling, I wanted to go back and re-do the past five minutes. Why was she cutting it so short?? Why was…it was…. and it slowly dawned on me that there was absolutely nothing I could do. She had cut too much of it too short for me to be able to say anything. It couldn’t be fixed, I had to just let her finished. I was paralyzed. So I sat and chatted with her, trying to mask my horror, while she cut away all of my hair and proceeded to “clean it up” with clippers. It was a quarter of an inch long on the sides and just shy of a half an inch long on the top.

I walked to my car – hyper aware of the different looks I was getting now that my shoulder length wavy locks were gone – and tried to breathe normally. I fell into the drivers seat and pulled down the mirror to have a look. I officially had a buzz cut. This was just what I needed. Now everyone who knew the Old Me would think that I was having a nervous breakdown. This would be further evidence of my state of mind, and I would be a joke to them.

Sitting in the front seat of my little blue civic, I had a total and complete meltdown. So complete that the first person I called wasn’t even a sympathetic friend. The first person I called, howling & sobbing, was my mom. Somehow I managed to drive myself home, shaking with anger and betrayal. The New Me was just as much a stranger as the Old Me. How had I possibly managed this?

The months after getting my hair chopped right off were hard. I didn’t ever consider myself a superficial person, but I guess my hair was more a part of my identity than I knew. I felt naked and raw all the time. My grandparents were concerned about me. My friends around the university didn’t recognize me for weeks – a complete blessing – and thankfully by the time they did I had built myself up to the point of being able to wave and enjoy the shock and horror of their reactions. They couldn’t handle my transformation – couldn’t process it – and some part of me relished that. I was unfathomable to them. Good for me! It said more about them than it said about me.

It took me a while, but eventually I started to love my short hair. I maintained it at a super-short length for about 8 months. I looked beautiful in my own way – my eyes popped like nothing else and while I had nothing to hide under, my features and personality were feminine in contrast with my little cut. I got more female attention than I could shake a stick at, which I was thoroughly amused & flattered by. I felt like a walking social experiment, guys & girls who would have never given me a second look when I had long hair were suddenly coming out of the woodwork, and my old friends had no idea what to make of me. I stopped trying to hide & really enjoyed that no one could quite put their finger on me at first glance anymore.

I started dating Mister when I had my buzz cut. He was the T.A. for one of my university classes – we started dating in January 2004 and had moved in together by February 2005. My hair cut was far too expensive for me to maintain when I moved out, so I started growing it out.

The “Shaggy Pixie Cut”, 4 or 5 months into growing it out

It’s taken four years but I’ve finally got the long hair that I’ve been growing my hair out for. I really love it – but I don’t let it become part of who I am. The Old Me was a girl who was paralyzed – by her relationships, friendships, image, and the imagined expectations of others. The New Me? She’s a lot more laid back, someone I would want to hang out with. She has days where she feels like a million bucks and days where she can’t get out the door in one piece. She almost never looks perfect in pictures, is unsure of herself sometimes, but she’s happier than the Old Me ever was.

With my long hair & the way I dress I think it’s easier for people to feel like they have an idea of who I am just by the way I look. If that makes them comfortable then I’m fine with that – but the New Me showed me that really, they don’t have any idea of who I am or how strong I am. They might think they have me pegged, but they really can’t put their finger on me, and that’s exactly how I like it.