Pretend

     Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you took a different path? If you were a different person walking? 

I often feel a spark when I watch a particularly evocative movie or read a particularly whimsical book. I think about what would have happened if I was just a bit smarter, a bit more curious. If I had honed different skills. If I had been bestowed with a different assortment of mental illnesses. 

Much like other people, fickleness holds me in its heavy arms and no matter how I try to fight, I can’t escape. No matter how often I think it’s so sure – this one, this time, will stick. It never does. I suppose the one thing that has stuck is writing, but with no official pigment or canvas. Blogs come and go, novels come and go, poetry gets hidden away. What’s really the point of it all?

I always thought writing was the least cool hobby. I wanted my calling to be painting, or music, or ballet. While I did end up finding passion in dance, and I do love all of those other artistic things, those are just affairs. My one true love will always be writing. Those are the cards I have been dealt. 

Some nights, I play pretend. I’m someone else. This person is maybe me, but a different me. Some nights I straighten my hair and wear long pretty night gowns and sit in my bed humming and pretend I’m a main character in a 90s movie. Whether this can be considered self care or self avoidance is up to interpretation.

In high school I used to wear vintage dresses and float around my town in the middle of the night pretending to be a ghost. I would walk to the graveyard and take in the night and the rush of it all. I tried to do that again one time in my first year of college and was immediately terrified by the knowledge that my town is, in fact, not very safe and I am, in fact, a young girl. I suppose my brain has developed a little bit in that time.

I straightened my hair yesterday and I've been playing pretend ever since. I search for the person I am when my hair is straight, who is she? How is she different from who I usually am?

I spent a long time deciding my outfit this morning, which I usually do, but this time it was for different reasons. What is a "straight hair outfit"? To me, every outfit is a curly outfit but which ones work with my hair straight?

It's interesting to see the correlation between my hair and my identity. I feel unrecognizable. I look almost identical to my older sister, who's hair is naturally straight.

I'm not really sure what I'm getting at with all of this. Do you feel like your hair connects with your identity? What do you do when you look in the mirror and don't recognize the person staring back at you?

The most interesting part is that when I look at myself in the mirror I feel so young. I look at my face and it makes me feel like a child. That leads to another question; is my hair also a representation of my growth? Does straightening it take away the age I have acquired? They say hair holds memories, but who's to say.

Love,

  Secret

P.S. I accidentally signed my real name there at first #awkward