As of the current date, I will have had some form of colored hair for almost two years continuously (although I did have a short period of colored hair 6 years ago). For a lot of people, it’s a fun fashion accessory, but what people don’t realize is that having hair like this can make you learn a lot about yourself that you didn’t even realize was there.

I first started dying my hair in eighth grade. At the time, I just put two blue streaks in my hair. From the moment I dyed my hair, I fell in love with it. It was so colorful and I felt like it really added a lot of interest to my hair. Eventually though, the blue faded and it turned into two blonde streaks on either side of my head.

I didn’t dye my hair again until my junior year in high school, but after that started, that was pretty much it. I started out by just dying the ends, and then eventually went full on color. I then had basically about every color on the rainbow, including actual rainbow hair that I wore to my senior prom, and loved every single minute of it.

There were a lot of lessons that I learned from having colored hair though.

First off, having colored hair definitely forced me to be more confident in myself. When you have a head of bright pink or purple hair, there is no way that you can blend into the background. No matter what, you will be noticed and either people will tell you that they love it, or there will be people who just give you a disapproving look. Regardless of what they would think, having something that stands out so much definitely pushes you to accept people’s criticism and be able to brush it off. As long as you like something, it shouldn’t matter what other people think about it.

Having colored hair also taught me just how much I’m capable of. When I first started dying my hair, my mom helped me do it myself in our upstairs bathroom. Pretty much every time afterwards, I did my hair completely by myself. I bleached it all myself, and dyed it. I would often have people ask me where I got my hair done, and I would reply that I did it by myself. Every time I would say this, I was met with shock and admiration, and this reaction always helped me remember that even though it was such commonplace for me to dye my own hair, that it was actually something that people normally didn’t do by themselves. Although I may never end up using this talent for anything other than my own hair and maybe my own friends, it’s still nice to know that I can learn and master things like these.

Beyond all of this, I think the most important thing that I learned is that life is too short to not be daring and be willing to branch out a little bit. Even if branching out seems crazy to other people. I can understand how my colored hair might have seemed crazy to a lot of people, but it is something that I really enjoy and makes me happy, so I kept changing the colors frequently and experimenting with crazier colors because I knew that there was no day better than today to take a risk and have fun with it. Changing hair isn't even a permanent thing, so for me there was really no reason not to.

My hair may seem like just a surface thing, but in all honesty it has really helped shape who I am today. I’m known as the girl with the colored hair, and although there may be a day where I go back to having brown hair, this will always be a part of me.