Many people, including myself, have felt the random urge to cut their hair whilst having a hairstyle crisis in the middle of the night. If you have a strong will, I’m sure you were able to shrug the feeling off, wait for the morning to reassess, and then take a trip to a professional stylist that definitely knows what they are doing. If you are prone to incredibly impulsive decisions, again, like myself, I would not be surprised if you found your mom’s hair-cutting scissors (or just that sharp pair from the kitchen) and went wild on your hair.
In the case that you end up choosing the latter, you might find yourself facing a quite strong series of emotions. I personally only ever cut my own hair, whether it be because I am incredibly lazy or that I trust myself a bit too much after cutting it myself for what is now going on two years. In recent times, I have found that taking on the responsibility of cutting someone else’s hair makes these emotions much, much more intense.
Without further ado, The 5 Stages of Cutting Hair on Your Own:
- Insane Confidence
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It’ll be easy, right? The simple way to get around making mistakes is to cut the hair longer than what the final result should be; this way, just a little trim will fix all the unevenness. You got this. If all those people on Tik Tok can do it, it shouldn’t be that hard. There’s no way this can go wrong.
- Creeping Skepticism
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The first cut or shave has been made. Are you sure you can do this—like, actually? It’s too late but the hair is already too short, also kinda crooked. Why were you so confident about this? Last time was easier because you only cut off two inches.
- Bargaining
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Pray to the hair gods and hope that they are listening. You had an ideal length/style when you started this thing, but that is no longer doable. I’m sure it’ll be okay, just keep going and hope for the best.
- Pure Sadness
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Here’s where the grief comes in. Yeah, it did not go as planned. Your hair is three inches shorter than you planned and still isn’t straight or maybe it kind of looks like a bowl cut; there are absolutely no layers because apparently there’s a whole technique for doing that? Who knew that cutting hair brings out so many emotions in such a short time. No but really, how did it end up looking like this?
- Acceptance
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It’s just hair; it’ll grow back. In the meantime, just throw it up into a ponytail! Your hair is a bit too short for that now? Bobby pin it! Scour the internet for new hairstyles that will hide the possible tragedy that is your hair in its current state. In complete honesty, that went a lot better than it should have and now you know what not to do next time!
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Once you’re done, think back to how bad that would’ve been if you tried cutting your friend’s hair instead of your own. Unless that’s exactly what you did, then you just have to hope that your friend really loves you. Luckily, I’m still friends with the people that have let me cut their hair(oops!) If you truly have done a horrible job, there are always plenty of hair stylists that would be more than happy to fix up your mess for you. Happy hair-styling!