Trigger Warning: Talk of Eating Disorders
I went from hair down to my butt, to a pixie cut in just a year. I cut my hair to shoulder length and pierced my nose before my first semester of college; at first, I didn’t realize why I did it, but now I realize it’s because I really needed change. It’s not that I didn’t love my long curls, but I was ready to be completely new. I was finally about to move away from toxicity; I was no longer going to be living with the toxicity going on in my own home.
Going to college was such a great change for me; for the first time, I was living my life for myself. I no longer had to pick up the slack of others to make sure my family just barely survived. I was responsible for myself and myself only; a freeing, but terrifying thing for me.
It scared me that I wasn’t going to be home to help my mother out. It scared me that I was no longer a constant resource to babysit my two-year-old brother. It scared me that I wouldn’t be right there to help if anything went wrong, but I had to remove myself from the things that I couldn’t control and to just focus on my own growth. I soon realized that at eighteen years old, I didn’t even know my own needs.
As a starting point, I started focusing on the things I needed to “fix” about myself. At first, it was little things like learning how to relax in my downtime, but then it turned into self-obsession, and not the good kind. In trying to focus on and perfect my body, my eating disorders were back in full swing. Living for myself only lasted for a few months before I started living for bulimia.
In seeking help people would tell me to “just stop,” and “just don’t throw up after you eat.” Do you think that I WANT to be doing those things to myself? Hell no. If you could just “stop,” eating disorders wouldn’t even be a thing. What people don’t realize is that eating disorders are more than just the habits they present.
It’s more than counting calories, unhealthy eating habits, and excessive exercising. It’s about control and trying to gain the power that you don’t think you have. It’s about controlling whether or not you gain that extra pound. It’s about having the power to eat whatever you want and to not have to pay the consequences of weight gain. It’s ironic because I felt like I had the power but I actually had none at all.
My day was scheduled around binging, purging, and exercising. That was how I was living for myself, so I thought. In recovery, I’m starting to realize how awful I’ve treated myself. I didn’t have control, I was rather being controlled. I felt so isolated; I would remove myself from social events so it would be easier to carefully monitor my eating, and I would spend the harder days sobbing over music and overthinking everything I did. Those nights are what drove me to recovery. I’m at what people call “the best time of my life,” so don’t I want to actually live it?
So two days ago I got a pixie cut. I’m done with this bullsh*t. Bulimia will no longer be the bane of my existence. Cutting all of my hair off acts as a reminder to me that I can always start over. I’m not my past, I am who I am at this very moment.
I cut my hair and it will grow back in time, but this time I’m growing with it.