Undo myself

I cut my hair.

It was the only way I knew how to physically rid myself of him.

I cut the strands that he had pulled his fingers through. I cut the soft locks that he had spent hours helping me sort out. I cut the hair that he had so persistently encouraged me to grow longer.

The first few days were the hardest.

It was empty. I didn't know what to do with my hands, now that I didn't have something to constantly tug at. My neck was constantly cold from the sudden exposure. And I was naked. I didn't have anything to hide behind. It was just me and my raw lonesomeness against the world.

Then the first few weeks had been the hardest.

I had spent years constantly altering myself to please another. I had forgotten how to be myself. It had taken time, considerably longer than just a few weeks, to unravel myself. To figure out which parts of me was my own and which were his. Cutting my hair had been the first step on that journey.

I had spent, as long as I can remember actually, trying to be obedient. I was quiet when my mother told me so. I became dispassionate when society instructed me so. I grew my hair when he ordered me so.

So that moment, standing shakily in a crappy motel bathroom at 3 AM, staring at my fragile reflection with sticky cheeks and hollow eyes, and bringing the shimmering scissors to my long hair, had been defining.

Losing the weight of my hair seemed to flip a switch inside my head. Years of suppressed emotions, rage, grief, ecstasy, came surging back all at once and swirled like a thunderstorm inside my head. I had collapsed on the splotchy bathroom floor and laughed and cried and screamed, heartbroken, furious, overjoyed.

It had taken me months to sort out that tangle of emotions. I wanted him back. I loved him. I wanted to kill him. I despised him. I wanted to thank him.

He had set me free.

Days and weeks and months after that fateful night, I had slowly shattered myself. But I walked with my head high. I appreciated the things that filled me with happiness. I raised my voice in situations that troubled me. I mourned at the incidents that distressed me.

I had spent my whole lifetime trying to build the perfect being.

It took me one year to wreck my own fiasco.