Unbound by my hair

Dear Web,
As I sit to write, I do not know what to write. Yesterday was the first day I did not write after 12 days in a row, since the beginning. There was no obvious reason for this. I was busy working etc, but that cannot be it totally because there have been other days in the last 12 when I have been as busy or more. So, I am curious about the quiet. And..wanted to at least give myself a chance to write something today, if desired.

My hair. That's what wants attention. Last week, I got my hair all cut off. Well, not all, but mostly. The day after we returned Phoenix to the Earth, I woke up in a fit. It felt like latent madness. I felt numb and like I was bumping around doing different usual routines. Then I sat down in the room where the night before I had slept on the floor behind Phoenix, holding on to him all night. I recall feeling sadness, but I also recall feeling a bit disconnected from myself. Then my eyes fell on a painting I'd done many years ago--a small self-portrait of Phoenix and I. In the painting, my hair was short, so it must have been 8 years ago, maybe more. And something in me snapped, like in that dream when I was asking "Where's Phoenix?" so innocently totally forgetting what has happened and then the rock inside me dropped and I remembered. I felt an intense anger and...something else...I don't know what. Madness has so many horrible connotations for women. And, I wonder if that names this wild, angry state. And in that wildness, I knew what I had to do.

I stood up, found scissors and walked outside to where Phoenix was. There on the site, I fell to my knees and keened. Wailed my heart out. Didn't care who heard. Hoped they did. Hoped someone other than me knew this wild pain. My partner came out, of course, in response and stayed at a distance so as not to disturb me or what was happening. In fact, she brought her drum and began quietly drumming. She knows how to hold sacred space and does it very well. So, while she drummed and I keened, I cut my hair. I didn't care about anything except that moment and all the moments from then on out when I would be without my beloved Phoenix.

Days afterwards, when I returned to work, my coworkers took great notice of my hair (which was asymmetrical and shorter) and said how much they really liked it (I wondered if their authentic enthusiasm was be/c they were responding to the clarity and purity of the state I was in when I cut it). Every time someone commented on it, I was transported back to that moment outside my house, wildly wailing. It was almost like their comments were a cue to myself, a thread that pulled me back into the reality of loss and what happened to me/us.

So, for a couple months, I refused to touch my hair (ie even it out or change it). Then I went in and allowed H. to trim it some, but not change the shape at all. I was adamant and she was so understanding. Then last week, I knew it was time to cut it again. This time more drastically. So, that is what I did. And I can honestly say it has felt so freeing. It's not that I feel less weighted by my grief, or by my memories...they were never a weight (having to go on sometimes felt like a weight). Phoenix has and never will be a weight of any sort for me. I am really not sure what I let go of in this drastic cutting...or what was in those locks that I sent down to the Gulf to help soak up some of the catastrophe there. I am really not sure. But, what I can say is that I sensed without a doubt it was time to cut off my hair (to change my appearance drastically) and that I have felt unbound since.

I am not my hair, I hear myself say to myself. People's reactions (which by the way have been a hoot to watch/witness) have not shaken me one bit. I listen to their processes they go through in seeing such a big change and struggling to find the words to....I don't know...make me feel ok?...I'm not sure what. But, I have felt no shame, no awkwardness, even in the face of some of their awkwardness and obvious dislike of my hair cut. I feel calm and strongly connected to who I am and why I am here on the planet. That's the best way I can describe it. It's big for me to feel this way in the face of another's judgement/assessment of me/my appearance.

So, I write into the Web, from this unbound place, knowing who I am. And I send that too to my dear Guardian Phoenix.

In Great Love,
Melissa