Like most decisions in my life, cutting of my hair was a pretty spur of the moment thing. My hair was dead at the ends and I was just tired of having to dry it all everyday and deal with the mop that is my naturally curly hair. Cutting it all off seemed like a quick, easy solution to this problem and I thought that I would enjoy the simplicity.

Well, the minute the hairdresser cut off that first chunk of hair I immediately felt the regret course through my veins. Even as I write this now, my body is filled with the anxiety that I felt in that moment. I shut my eyes as she cut my hair roughly just to get rid of most of it, and when she put a whole 8 inches of hair in my hand so I could feel how much it was I did everything in my power to not start crying right there in the chair. What had I just done?

Now some of you are reading this and thinking, wow this girl is kind of shallow for caring this much about her hair, she is lucky to even have hair to cut off and the money to get it cut professionally in the first place. Now this is all true. My reaction was, and still is a little shallow. But that is the point of this whole thing.

My friends came with me as emotional support and when we left the salon and went out to eat I felt like everyone was staring at me. I kept running my hand up the back of my head, where the hairs were so short that I could barely get a hold of them. “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh” I kept thinking the whole time we ate “why did I just do that, this is a dream this isn’t real it will grow back tomorrow”. Wrong.

I got home and immediately went to the bathroom and had a good long look in the mirror and I did not like what I saw. I intended the cut to be longer than it was, long enough so I could tuck it behind my ears but I could barely grab it with my fingers on the sides. I couldn’t believe how short it really was. My bangs don’t do that lovely swoop in the front despite what everyone thinks they have the potential to do, so my hair was pushed back on the top and honestly looked pretty manly. I was horrified. I had my hair cut so that I could feel liberated from the hassle of doing hair every day and to look effortlessly beautiful. Now I just felt effortlessly butt ugly and there was not a single thing I could do about it. I started to cry.

I had my hair cut on a Friday, and I don’t think I left my apartment once that weekend except to go to the gym, where I even cut that trip short because I felt so self conscious. Never in my entire life had I felt so uncomfortable in my skin even compared to those middle school days when you have no clue how to wear eyeliner and rocked the lilac colored eye shadow.

I felt like every blemish on my skin was even more visible, my body was going to be even more scrutinized because I didn’t have anything on my head to distract anyone from anything else. I suddenly noticed every single thing that was wrong with my body and judged every inch of myself. My teeth were coffee stained, my skin was breaking out, my legs were far from toned, the skin on my arms has those ugly red bumps for no reason and they seemed worse than ever, my skin was pale in a deathly kind of way, and the dark circles under my eyes seemed so dark that years of sleep wouldn’t make them go away.

I felt an intense vulnerability that I didn’t even really know was ever possible. I don’t think I ever realized how confident I actually was before I cut my hair. This is what insecurity really truly felt like and boy did I not like to be on the other side of it.

The first week or two when everyone was seeing me for the first time everyone complimented me and told me it looked great saying I had the face shape for it, and I was rocking it. But in my head all I could tell myself was “What else are they going to say? ‘You look like a boy and you shouldn’t have done that’, because that would obviously make me feel even worse”.

It took me a long time to actually come to terms with the fact that the one year old boys hair that I nanny was longer than mine, but eventually I did. Eventually when I looked in the mirror I could actually look and not turn away and cringe. I finally felt a little more comfortable with my hair, but it was only because I started to feel more comfortable with myself.

The vulnerability that I felt, made me feel like I was the ugliest one out of my friends, in my class, at the gym, at the bar, on the train, really in any place I went. So when I had to talk to people, have job interviews, go to work, go to class and talk to guys at bars I wasn’t depending on what was on the outside to show who I was. I had to show how I was a good and beautiful person because I had a good and beautiful soul. I had to make my personality shine brighter than my appearance to distract people from what I thought was ugliness, but what happened was that I actually become confident in the woman that I am, and not the woman that everyone sees physically. The reason that I started to feel better about my hair is because I honestly and truly realized that that was not what mattered in the slightest, and it was certainly nothing to shed tears over.

Now don’t get me wrong, I will probably die with dragging behind me on the ground because I am beyond terrified to have my hair cut again, but I do not regret cutting it all off. I was deeply humbled by becoming so vulnerable, and I was humbled in a way that I didn’t even think that I needed to be. I was grounded in a way that I never thought that I needed to be grounded. But now I can honestly say that I am the most confident I have ever been, and it’s because I am confident in ME, which is more than the inches of hair on my head, but how bright my soul shines through everything I do.