My virgin hair is a shade of brown — light brown with a hint of gold. When I was a child I had blonde hair and the sun would lighten the shade throughout the summer. As I got older my hair darkened and I so desperately held on to the words “my hair is blonde.” It defined me, it was who I was. I remember summers in middle school looking up recipes using lemons to lighten my hair. When I got to high school I begged my mom to let me go to the salon. She refused each time I asked, forcing my dad to comment on how beautiful my natural hair was. Senior year, after a botched hair dye job done in my best friend’s bathroom, my mom finally agreed to book an appointment. For my 17th birthday, I got my hair done. Full highlights were my first mistake. I wasn’t a stranger to the look of roots growing in; I had seen it before from my lemon concoctions. But, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the next few years of hair insecurity. I became a regular at the salon, never letting my roots grow more than a centimeter. The feeling of my scalp burning from the bleach made me smile. This horrifying cycle went on for almost a year. Finally, it stopped. I said my last goodbyes leaving the salon in August, ready to take on college with my dead blonde hair. I would venture back to the salon only on holidays. At the end of freshman year, my hair cried with joy after not being touched since winter. My hair started to become gooey and hard to brush, it was knotting easily and I felt ugly all the time. August before junior year I decided I was done with the grown-out roots look and I decided to go darker and get a balayage. I’ve been growing the balayage out for six months and I was doing so well, I finally felt like me. Until I found the greys coming in. I knew it, I knew this was going to happen. It was half the reason I wanted to grow my hair out in the first place, just to see. In the whole scheme of things, this is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me and this is not nearly close to the horrible things that are happening in the world today. So I guess what I’m trying to say is if you are a 20-year-old going grey you’re not alone and it is not the end of the world.
The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UNH chapter.