Snip, snip, snip.
I’ve always hated the sound of scissors snipping. The metallic snip, snip, snip reminds me of imminent change, and it terrifies me.
Ironically, though, as I sat on a spinning beauty salon chair last June and longingly stared back at my reflection, the sound of scissors snipping through my long, brown hair thrilled me. The thick brown locks that defined my identity for the past two years were about to be chopped off. In a matter of minutes, with the snip of a slim pair of scissors, I would be an entirely new person. And I was so excited.
I observed as locks of long, brown hair fell fearlessly from my head to the floor, signaling at the new self I was about to become. But when the hairdresser removed the large, black, bib-like cloth from around my neck, announcing that she had finished, I became paralyzed, unable to elicit any reaction except for a shy, nearly inaudible, gasp.
I hated the haircut. I’d been so sure that this was just the change I needed right before I left for college, one that would render me an entirely different person. I had thought it would make me look mature and beautiful. How had it managed to do exactly the opposite?
I lied straight through my teeth. I told the hairdresser I loved the cut and thanked her for a job well done. But as soon as I flipped my car on, ready to drive home, I burst into tears. I kept pulling at the edges of my hair, as if tugging at them would make my long-gone brown locks grow back. The first thing I did when I got home was tell my mom how much I hated my hair. I incessantly repeated just how much I despised it. She, on the other hand, thought I looked lovely — like an adult. She insisted that I looked different, but in a good way. Unfortunately, her motherly insistence that it was exactly the change I needed did little to change my mind.
For the first time in months, I felt ugly. I had attached the perception of my own beauty to my long brown hair — convincing myself that without it, I was unattractive. Without it, I wasn’t pretty.
Snip, snip, snip.
The summer before my first year of college consisted of one too many orientation sessions and an endless process of packing up my entire life into two large suitcases. It was already a very stressful time, so blaming everything that went wrong on a collection of dead cells on my head that were accidentally cut too short didn’t do me any good. But I was in a vicious cycle of anxious self-loathing, and I saw no way out.
I wasn’t able to enroll in one of the classes I most wanted to take, and instead of attributing the event to the fact that I was simply a freshman looking at class options months after every other student at the University of Michigan had already done so, I blamed it on my short hair. I lost my favorite pair of leggings the week before leaving for college, and although I eventually found them, I blamed their loss on my ugly, chopped hair. My long-haired self would’ve been able to enroll in that class I so coveted. My long-haired self would never have lost my favorite pair of leggings. In this twisted reality, she was perfect — and I was the mess she left behind.
As I autopiloted my way through my last summer at home in Puerto Rico, I became my own villain, blaming every little thing that happened to me on an arbitrary belief that the strands of hair on my head were responsible for every unprecedented mishap in my life. But what I didn’t understand was that under that layer of short hair, the same being still lived on, and while she was connected to that long-haired girl from the past, she wasn’t attached to her. She just wasn’t allowing herself to grow.
Snip, snip, snip.
As late August neared, my days and nights filled with teary-eyed goodbyes to friends and family, and draining last-minute arrangements before putting the lock on the luggage that secured the past 18 years of my life in their entirety. Change loomed inevitably over me, and although I initially thought that chopping off an entire head of hair would help with this dreadful transition, it only made it worse.
In my mind, long-haired me would’ve been able to valiantly bid her friends adieu without bursting into tears and feeling like her life was ending. She would’ve empathetically smiled and said, “See you in a few months! This isn’t a goodbye, but a see you later,” but the actual moment was too emotional not to cause me to come undone in my friends’ arms as we hugged goodbye.
Trekking the 2,111 miles from home with my parents by my side, I believed my long-haired self would’ve felt prepared for what was to come and excited for her new life in college. I, in comparison, felt a permanent pit in my stomach that deepened by the minute. What if my short-haired self was too insecure, too boring or too awkward to make friends? What if she wasn’t smart enough to excel in her classes like she had in high school? What if everything she did went wrong?
Snip, snip, snip.
My first week of college consisted of awkward and repetitive icebreakers that led me into further self-deprecation. When I opened my mouth to introduce myself, I would have to clear my throat every single time I spoke a single word because the voice that kept creeping out of my throat wasn’t mine. I knew it wasn’t my long-haired self’s voice, at least.
My long-haired self had been secure in the track she came to college to pursue. With an intended double major in english and political science, she felt like she would garner just the necessary skills to thrive at the University, and go on to apply to law school after four years of undergraduate education. Now, my short hair and I were lost. With so many programs and majors to choose from, I didn’t know exactly what I was searching for anymore. And even as my parents repeatedly comforted me, telling me it was OK, that I was just 18, that I had a lifetime to figure it out — everyone around me seemed to be perfectly clear on what they had sought out to do, and that left me feeling disheartened in a sea of false certainty, like I was lost in the middle of a pointless journey with no end in sight. My collegiate plans of the past had been the reality for my long-haired self, but they were no longer my reality.
This vicious cycle followed me throughout my first semester of college. The study skills that had belonged to my long-haired high school self were lost. Because what was I going to study for if I didn’t have an end goal to work toward? What was I even striving for? Frustrated and confused, I would spend my days daydreaming about my strong-willed, long-haired high school self. She would certainly be disappointed in who I’d become.
Snip, snip, snip.
I wish I could say my patterns of self-deprecation and toxically nostalgic longing for my past self ended on a sunny day in mid-December, when I realized I was exactly where I had to be and that I just had to let life happen to me instead of trying to control it. I never had that epiphanous moment where everything changed for me, where I buried my apparently perfect, long-haired self in the depths of my past. I still have an aversion to change, and it still terrifies me wholeheartedly. But, even if I’m still scared, even if I’m still terrified, I still have successfully managed to change.
I slowly learned to open the door to change, as a parent opens the door to their child’s bedroom to silently check if they’re up past their bedtime or rightfully sound asleep. I no longer revere my long-haired self. She was spectacular, yes. She was beautiful and fierce and kind and smart. But I’m also beautiful and fierce and kind and smart; I just embody those traits differently now. My hair is now in the awkward-length stage, and I’m terrified of the next time I hear a pair of scissors snip, snip, snipping through my mid-length brown locks—but not for the same reason I was nine months ago. I’ve now come to accept change as an occurrence that is meant to happen, one that we often can’t avoid. Change detaches you from the negative parts of your past but permanently connects you to its memories — it detaches you from the self you’ve outgrown, allowing a new one to relish the memories and uninhibitedly evolve as a result. It’s the memories you should hold onto forever, not the person you no longer are. You’re allowed to say goodbye to a part of yourself. You’re allowed to grow. You’re allowed to evolve. And you’re most certainly allowed to change.
Statement Contributor Graciela Batlle Cestero can be reached at gbatllec@umich.edu.