I started color-treating my hair when I was a freshman in high school. My elementary and middle schools had strict dress codes that disallowed any sort of colored hair (aside from colors that could occur naturally), so once I got that breath of fresh air.... I took it.

Over the summer, I had tried using wash-out pink hair dye on the tips of my hair - and obviously, that didn't give me the results I had planned on. A few months later, I went out and bought Splat hair dye in the color of Aqua Rush. If you know anything about hair dye, you'll know that this was a huge mistake. I didn't bleach my hair prior to putting the dye on the tips of my hair, so it turned a deep turquoise immediately. I wasn't mad, I thought it looked pretty at the time. Once it started fading, however, it turned a murky green color and looked as if I had rubbed grass all over my hair. It looked atrocious.

After that horrendous adventure, I grew my hair out more so I could cut off that colored section and start fresh. My mom took me to a wonderful hair stylist (who now does our hair every time we need it done) and she gave me a really pretty dark brown base with bright pink, teal, and purple bangs. I absolutely loved it, and I got a lot of comments about it from a lot of my friends. For the most part, they seemed to like it. The guy I was dating at the time wasn't exactly ecstatic about it, but I just brushed it off and kept telling him that I liked it and I wasn't going to change it.

However, he broke up with me before our sophomore year and I felt like I needed a change. My mom called up our stylist and scheduled an appointment. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to get my hair unnaturally colored this time.. So I went with a honey-type brown color to accent the brown that my hair already had. I got it chopped from my shoulder-length style to a bob-type cut that ended right past my jawbone. I absolutely loved the style, but I felt like a part of who I was as a person was missing. I looked normal, plain, and like people couldn't see how creative I was without my colors. I let myself handle the honey color up until November of my sophomore year. I was getting braces, and I thought that they would make me look strange.. So after I got them, I went to the local Wal-Mart again and bought more Splat.. This time in Luscious Raspberries, which is the brightest red that they offered. I bleached my bangs and then applied the dye, which only intensified the color that I was depositing into my hair.

I let it stay this way until my mom told me I needed to dye it before my junior year because it was faded into an orange-hue blonde that didn't really look all that great on anyone. I gave in and let her tell our stylist what to do, deciding to keep my hair short but I dyed it a dark brown and added in honey-blonde highlights. Honestly, I kept my hair that way until my senior year of highschool ended. I really did like how it looked, but I still thought that it wasn't showing who I was as a person.

Once I got into Ball State, I stayed natural up until about a week or two ago, deciding over Thanksgiving break that I needed a CHANGE. A real change, this time. I didn't want just a cut and touch-up on my highlights. I had a plan. I went to our stylist and asked her to give me a deep brown fading into a deep red color. It honestly looked amazing, but red is a hard color to work with, so I ordered some color depositing conditioner from oVertone (which is honestly a LIFESAVER) and applied that. After about an hour of conditioning, my red was back and slightly brighter than it was before - which I am totally fine with.

Altogether, I feel more like myself now. I feel as if people can see my creativity without me needed to explain everything to them. I got a lot of questions about whether or not my parents were fine with it, if my boyfriend was fine with it, and I've even had some people tell me that boys aren't interested in girls that color their hair.. Or that people won't respect someone that has unnaturally colored hair. The thing is, though.. I didn't dye my hair for them. I didn't dye my hair for you. I dyed my hair for myself , because my opinion is the only opinion that truly matters when it comes to what I do with my body and my hair. I am my own person, not some machine that has to fit the typical "Barbie" perfect look that people are trying to push onto us, and I'm not some mindless robot that follows the beck and call of every single person on this planet.

I followed my heart, but did you?