Farewell, red mullet

I have a little curly red mullet on the back of my neck. I do. Thing is, I got really very used to having thick curly hair, and I loved it. It’s now reverted to straight and thin, and almost all the waves have gone. There are just a few tight curls left at the bottom, at the back, and I haven't been able to bring myself to have them trimmed off. I also Clairoled my hair red, and hit lucky on a colour that is very nice (though I say it myself). I even remembered to keep the top of the box, so that I can buy the same one next time.

I’ve been loathe to cut off my curls. I didn’t like them at first, but as time passed, I got very fond of them. Having cancer seems to involve endless rearrangement of your mental furniture. I’d rearranged it to embrace the idea of curly hair, and then I had to go about re-rearranging it to re-embrace the idea of getting my straight hair back. I knew it would revert over time. I just didn’t know “over time” meant a few weeks. I thought it would be months or even years. By the time I’d got to like having curly hair, it was time to U-turn back again.

Losing your hair is a big deal. In a way, though, it’s no bad thing. It's easier to focus on losing your hair, than on having cancer. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not really an inevitable side-effect of the drugs, but a result of some product that the medics deliberately add. Maybe they know that thinking about losing your hair is the easier option, and consider it an act of kindness to make that happen.

So yes, I enjoyed my curls, but I’ve held onto them for reasons beyond the curliness itself. There’s a feeling that they’re a part of me now. Somehow cutting them off feels like the end of an era. It’s not an era I liked, but it was an era. I didn’t have any photos taken of me when I was bald – I didn’t want to preserve the look for posterity. But I wish I had. That was me, whether I liked it or not, and I wish I had a picture to look back on and say “yes, that was me”. But I have got photos of the curlicued Iota. I’ll be able to look back and say “ooh, get me with my curly 2010 hair!”

But even I can see that an aging diminutive curly-at-the-bottom red mullet is not the most attractive of looks, and so the little hoops must go. It’s one thing to enjoy a season of ringlets; it’s quite another to go around in polite society with straggles dripping down your neck. In the past year, I have gone through so many looks: Gandhi, Sinead O’Connor, Obama, Showaddywaddy. Time to take control, and get me to a salon.

Here’s a photo of them, though, for you to enjoy before they go.



Farewell, little curly red mullet.

Top photo credit: Philippe Guillaume, Flickr