It seems that an eternity has passed since my leap of faith. May has quickly become September and now that exhilarating, overwhelming leap of faith is a little bit of a fizzle. A little bit of a fizzle and a whole lot of “what have I done?”
Wandering around the house on the weekend it dawned on me that I am not only going to the Pro-blogger conference, but I am going there with barely my ankles wet in the world of blogging.
My head: Maybe I should sell my ticket?
My gut: You’ll be fine.
So what better way to tackle the overwhelming anxiety? Be prepared, get ready, get active!
In the calamity of my thoughts one stood out: get a haircut. Yep, being prepared should drown out the anxiety and getting a haircut is being prepared.
I have had a long love affair with my hairdresser for the better part of twenty years. I have never betrayed our relationship, not even once. But he is a man of many love affairs and so a last minute appointment on a Saturday would be impossible. My mind was a whirlwind that weekend, so instead of ringing up and making an appointment for the week of the conference I found myself down at the local shops knowing there were two hairdressers there that I could pop my head into. As I drove down and parked the car I kept thinking “I only need a trim, how hard can that be?” Surely.
I sat down in the chair, ignoring the hair on the floor that had not been swept up all day. I sat there as a stranger cloaked me in a black cape and reached for the water spray bottle. “The spray bottle?” a voice inside me shrieked. I gasped as she began to wet only the ends of my hair. I ignored the screams of “get up and run” coming from deep within the roots of each hair follicle. I sat there and watched, very much like a two-dimensional animated emoticon, as this stranger cut, trimmed and destroyed my hair.
Oh the shame. Oh the dread. Oh the disappointment. What had I done?
I paid my cash, lied and told her it looked great and dashed straight into the local chemist. “All this needs is a new colour,” I thought to myself. I grabbed my box of Dark Brown Allure and dashed home.
An hour later, colour in, hair washed and blow dried and I sat there looking at myself in the mirror. My only thought was “this is exactly the opposite of what I should have done leading up to the conference, absolutely the opposite.” I sent a photo to my sister of my hair. Her reply, “Shave it off.” My dread was now ten-fold.
So my day ended far worse than it began. I now carried the added anxiety of wondering if my hair would grow enough by the time of the conference for this new style to have grown out, or at least be long enough to disguise terrible with messy with the aid of a GHD and some hair gel.
But far worse than any of that, I faced the reality of my adulteress ways. I had to face him. There would be no denying the evidence of my sins as I walked through his salon again. No denying that I had betrayed our relationship. No denying that I had betrayed our trust. Would we speak of it openly and honestly? Or would we both sit there in silence, each knowing the truth and the guilt, not saying a word? The mere thought of that day to come, made me shudder.
