Everything New is Old Again

I recently donated many inches of hair to Beautiful Lengths. Though I was excited for the chop, it was still a bit of a shock. Clutching a small Aveda bag filled with what used to be my tresses, I looked at the new me in the mirror, and I hardly recognized her. Already feeling transitional and out of place, I bit my lip not to cry as the short-haired girl looked at me with her own glassy eyes and troubled frown. I decided that I hated, hated, hated the hair cut.

Like my look, everything has seemed strange and new of late. Now post-graduate school, in a new and exciting but wholly overwhelming job, in a new apartment, far from everyone I spent the last two years seeing on a regular basis, I find myself in search of the comforting and familiar. Though Jackson has been my home before, so many of my closest friends here have uprooted and replanted themselves in places far away. Everywhere I go I pass what used to Debbie and Alec's house, what used to be Jerry and Alex's house, where I used to live with Neola and Sam, where I used to live with Lydia and Amanda, where the sketchiest bar in Jackson used to be (it's now a sub sandwich shop - talk about a facelift). So many of the people and places that colored my life here are gone, or preparing to leave, or seem unlike themselves.

Okay, I thought. It's a new world. I have to be a new me. I have to grow into this haircut, not just wait for my hair to grow.

After I'd been here for two weeks, a friend came through town. She stopped by my office and gave me a huge hug.

"You look great!" She exclaimed.

"Really? Do you like the haircut?" I asked.

"Haircut?" She looked confused.

"Yeah... I just donated, like, a foot of hair."

She shrugged. "Huh. I didn't know your hair had gotten that long. I mean, you look just how you looked when I met you."

We chatted for another minute, and when she walked out of my office I thought about her nonchalant statement. It was true. When we first met, several years ago, it was right after I had chopped off ten inches of hair to donate to Locks of Love. I found a picture from five summers ago, the first time I moved down here. Appropriately enough, the photograph is a blurry and grainy scanned-in group shot, but still unmistakable. There was the face: a few years younger, but clearly the same girl, a girl with short dark hair and a slightly nervous look... and gradually, the realization came. I looked around and found the familiar in the unfamiliar, as everything new became old again. I'm not a new Beth - I just don't always recognize myself. I think that's one of the best contributions an old friend can make: reminding you that who you were is who you are, helping you re-learn how to cling to the best parts of yourself. Funny how we keep thinking that the scenery is changing, when sometimes it's just our own breath fogging the window and rendering the familiar obscure.

This new blog will not center around my life, but will be a weekly opportunity for some sort of commentary... but I thought for the first post, I would assure everyone that I am, in fact, doing all right (since I assume my current readership is primarily comprised of my parents). And incidentally? I have decided to love, love, love the new haircut...

...but I'm definitely going to grow it out again.