Every time something bad or slightly inconvenient has ever happened to me, I would strive to become a better and more polished version of myself. A “glow-up” as some would call it. Despite my criticism’s of this fad, I’m unfortunately not impermeable to societal expectations and indeed fall victim to them.Â
I’ve always been envious of people who have the self-restraint to grow out their hair and effortlessly maintain a kempt appearance. Around this time last year, I felt spontaneous, so, I went to my mom and asked her to chop off my hair and I ended up sporting a chin-length bob for a few months. Now, I’ve decided to grow my hair out and I went back to dying it. I asked my dad to put in a couple of streaks of red (that has now faded to orange) and had I kept the bob, I would’ve resembled GoGo from Big Hero 6.
My efforts to put myself back together again always involved improving myself in any way possible, just so I could appear perfect on the outside. The reality is, people are messy and multifaceted. And you don’t have to be perfect when you put yourself back together. You can glue yourself back together with anything you want: gold, gum, stickers, etc. I personally feel like I would go well with gum. It adds to the mess.Â
Perhaps, I am the way I am because there was an incident involving a glass of wine when I was a kid, which I unfortunately, don’t remember but my mom does. Nevertheless, being a kid is all about making mistakes, messing things up, and learning from them along the way. Just because we made some mistakes in our childhood out of curiosity or lack of wisdom does not mean our adulthood will be doomed.Â
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of embracing imperfection by restructuring broken ceramics with gold. The word kintsugi literally means “joining with gold.” The end result is better than the original, and the cracks are what make it beautiful. The gold glints in the light and catches your eye. It makes it more interesting.Â
It’s hard to accept that I’m messy in various ways. Mentally, emotionally, etc. Perfection is always changing and becoming perfect is boring. We all love being messy in some sort of way, either by gossiping to our friends about our love life, other people’s love lives or partaking in internet drama. Without mess, what’s the fun in living? There’s a reason why we gravitate towards gossip tabloids and believing blind items because it’s entertainment for us at the detriment of the people who are the entertainment.Â
I literally admitted that I would put myself back together with gum. The reason being because of a beabadoobee lyric that goes “We go together like the gum on my shoes.”Â
“We go together like the gum on my shoes” is a line that I’ve been quite attached to since I first listened to talk. Finding gum on one’s shoe (and anywhere it’s not supposed to be) is an annoyance and frankly disgusting. You try to remove it in any way you can: dragging your shoe on the pavement, scraping it off with a stick and then giving up because the gum is here to stay.Â
Oftentimes, I feel like the gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe. They tend not to know it, but I’m messy inside. They burn the bridge, and I’m left to scatter the ashes. Sometimes gum can’t help but get stuck on your shoe. Does it mean to purposefully? No. Gum doesn’t have a mind of its own. It’s just incessantly sticky. But does it happen sometimes? Unfortunately, yes.
The more I reflect on myself, the more I see that I’m actually the gum stuck in someone’s hair. Getting gum stuck in your hair is even more annoying because it’s near impossible to remove it and usually results in having to cut off the hair. People have to cut each other off if they get too stuck. Too attached.Â
While it hurts, hair grows back and life moves on.