Bad Hair Decisions

This is a story about bad decisions.

WARNING: This post is rated R for extreme hair choices, hair-related violence, and graphic incompetence. Not recommended for people who have a heart condition or are hairdressers and know better. Reader discretion is advised.

Part 1: "I need a haircut."

Once upon a time, it had been almost a year since I got it cut or colored, so my hair was pretty sad looking.

I knew it was long past time for a haircut, but I kept getting too busy or forgetting or just putting it off. 

My hair may not have a voice of its own, but I can always understand when it's trying to tell me something. When it gets too long between haircuts, it starts to reach out. It grabs on to anything around it, like seatbelts and tree branches and other people. A while back, Daniel and I were walking out to my car with one of his friends, and I made the mistake of wearing my hair free. It tried to attack him.

Part 2: "Let's get ombrés!"

Finally I decided to listen to my hair and started thinking about going in. At the same time, I was going through a mid-life crisis (at 21, I know, apparently I'm not going to live long) and decided I needed to do something drastic to my hair. I thought about doing something like this:

A friend of mine messaged me on the day of The Terrible Decision and said "Let's go get ombrés! I made us appointments for tonight!" 

"Oh, um. Alright then!" I said.

She picked me up from work and we drove to our hair appointments. That's when I realized... our appointments were at Paul Mitchell Hair School. That's right. A school. For people who don't know how to do hair yet.

"Well, alright," I thought, "I wanted to do something drastic, I guess this is it!"

I told the hair girl what I wanted, and then decided that I wasn't even going to look until it was over. If I thought about it too hard, I was definitely going to freak out. And for good reason...

During the course of my hair adventure, the instructor came over a couple times to check out the progress. The girl doing my hair seemed... less sure of herself than I would have liked. 

Since my hair was so far past its expiration date, at one point it actually took two girls to brush through it. Once it was brushed, they both worked on coloring it, since I have a lot of hair. While they were putting the color on, one girl said to the other "Are we doing this the same way?"

But I didn't care, because I was doing something drastic.

Finally, three and a half hours later, my hair was done. They turned me around to show me the finished product, and uh...

It ended up looking more like this:

Yikes.

Part 3: "I can fix this..."

I tried really hard to live with my new hair. I really did. But it takes a lot of effort to stay in your happy place that long, so I knew eventually I'd have to do something to fix it. 

I had already spent an egregious amount of money on the first dye job (they charge by bowl of color, which my hair takes... several), so I was wary about going back to a salon. Plus I have developed some pretty severe trust issues when it comes to hair, having lived twentyish years with a gigantic mass of curls.

Suddenly, the thought crossed my mind... Why don't I just take matters into my own hands?

I'd heard horrible things from my hairdresser friends about grocery store hair color, and plus I was a little afraid to use it on myself, so I took to the internet to find a safe and natural way to fix my hair. I found the answer I was looking for: Hydrogen Peroxide.

The Internet told me to just spray it on, leave it for a bit, and wash out. That seemed easy enough, so I took to the bathroom to solve my hair woes.

One thing I forgot to consider was that H2O2 will also bleach your skin.

Photo has been enhanced to show detail
(because I'm already white enough so it's hard to see)

It turned out better than I expected, in the end. My hair didn't all fall off of my head, and the color came out semi-normal. 

My eventual plan is to try the H2O2 a couple more times, maybe bleach the rest of my hair all the way to blonde. Of course, I've resolved to treat it a little better, you know, blow dry it less and use better hair products. And I will definitely make sure to cut it sooner next time.

But the most important lesson that I've learned out of all this experience is that my ponytail is my ponytail, no matter what color.