Yes, this is 100% a true story. Ask my friends. Ask my mom. They still don't trust me with scissors.
My sophomore year of college, I was not, as you say, mentally stable. I had recently fallen out of my bed and bruised the entire left side of my body, survived on only 30 espresso shots a day, and hadn't studied for my upcoming Biology test. You could say my tiny brain was in panic mode.
You know those days where you just really don't want to do anything? The ones where even getting up to go pee seems like a big task? That's how I felt most days, and the entire day leading up to my test was no different.
My anxiety manifests itself in different forms. Some days it's a knot in my stomach, sometimes it's just an extra motivator to get things done, and sometimes, (just sometimes) it comes out in wanting to cut off my hair.
I usually pride myself in my excellent procrastinating ways, but this was not one of those moments. I put off studying for the ENTIRE day. Sure, I talked about studying. I laid down all my study materials. I told my roommate how I really, really needed to start studying soon. Then, it was 12 a.m. and I realized I was screwed.
So, with my anxiety over my Biology test skyrocketing, I decided the best course of action would not be to put notecards in my hand and hunker down- but to sit on the cold tile floor of our dorm room in front of the full-length mirror with a trash can and some rusty scissors from 7th grade.
I'll be honest, it didn't start off that bad. My intentions may not have been in the right place, but I for sure (believed) I knew what I was doing- so that should count for something. I watched a few YouTube videos and looked up how to give yourself a haircut online. I was prepared. I don't go into anything half-assed or underprepared, just maybe a little unqualified.
And I was anxious, so a little change was sure to pick that frown upside down, right?
I started with long layers, tying my hair up at the top of my head with a hair tie and cutting across. That was the easy part. Then came the face-framing bits. By now, I wanted to be done and just took to hacking at an angle directly into my hair around my chin.
Are you cringing yet?
It had to be like, 1:30 in the morning. My roommate was seriously worried but trying not to show it. And I thought it was hilarious and snapchatted my pile of hair to the masses.
Long story short, it ended badly. Surprise, surprise.
I used a lot of bobby pins for months to hid the chunk of hair missing from trying to give myself face framing bangs. My roommates would never let me near scissors or my hair for a long time. And I slowly had to learn how to cope with my anxiety in a healthy way.
Sometimes I still get the intense need to cut my hair (and occasionally I give in, just in less extreme measures).
So if you ever get abnormally nervous about something late at night, maybe wait it out. And more importantly, go to therapy.