the taming of the hair

my hair has reached my saturation point. it is about as long as I can tolerate it, and as big as I can stand it, and if I can only wait another six months, it'll be amazing [sleek and long, flowing down my back in waves],

but until then I must survive the seemingly endless errant hairs that have escaped and lingered on my coat, on my gloves, hat, scarf, etc; the other day I pulled several hairs from the waistband of my pants. of course, winter's friend static cling is partly to blame,

but also, it is amazing how many hairs depart my scalp each day and shocking that I am not bald by now.

in order to tame it somehow, to keep the strands from taking their lives into someone's coffeecup, I've been doing braided pigtails, which make me look like an old lady trying to look younger than her years, but then again, there is something appealing about braided pigtails. they're so tightly bound. they make me look like someone who's in control, since I managed to wrangle all that hair into those two compact spaces. they distract the eyes away from my big ears, and the brown and black patterns of the highlights in my botched hair dye jobs look amazing.

the funny thing is even though my hair is contained in these braids, there are still hairs all over, floating up around my feet on the floor, draped over dressers and sinks, puddled into corners and I am beginning to wonder how come I never seemed to notice all these hairs before.

the paranoid part of me wants to believe that something is different with me, that maybe it is winter and my scalp is dry, or that I've somehow contracted some horrible disease and the first clue is hair loss.

but the truth is, I hardly ever spent time in my old apartment and I rarely cleaned and the most horrifying hair thing I remember from those days is pulling a foot and a half long rope of my hair from the drain in the shower that was overly blackened with hair dye so that it didn't seem like it really could belong to me and literally looked liked a drowned and deflated pet ferret.

yeah. horrifying. and absurd; I kept pulling and pulled for what seemed like way too long.

perspective whispers that it hasn't gotten that bad.