Currently the hair on our head is about the length of pixie cut. It is nice. It is practical. It doesn’t take too long to get to ready.
Our scalp itches like crazy, mainly because we both did not know the dangers of sulfates in hair and that some of our hair products contain sulfates. Yeah more things to spend money on /sar (want to buy the better, healthier products, though money is tight).
But back at our old house, our first trauma home, we had long hair. Just the way our mother liked it /sar. She made having long hair traumatic for us. The detangling process ignoring our whimpers. And probably other things that I am not allowed to know, which is alright.
When we get haircuts for our short hair, hairstylists would often tell us that we have a lot of hair and “have you considered growing it out, it would look nice on you.” There are many reasons why this triggers us, which I do not feel like going into.
I miss braiding our own hair, though I do not know how to appreciate hair being pulled back such as in a pony-tail.
Our mother has long curly hair and would often tell us that if we wanted hair like her’s we had to take better care of it. Though the “take better care” part usually meant in the way that suited her. Like the detangling hair even when it was painful for us.
Our hair is fine the way that it is–besides probably needing to see a dermatologists about why our scalp itches and other hair-related problems–though I miss the way that it was, even though I may not have been around when our hair was much longer.
I am not mad at our system for cutting the hair to be short as a pixie cut, I feel with the past trauma done to our hair in the past with other issues, hair care was less of a priority and a pixie cut made this hair easier to maintain.
Also a little upset that we were unaware of heatless curls, even though if we did stuff like that in the past our parents would probably have made a mockery of it. “Why can’t you accept things for the way that they are?” (wise words to be saying to a traumatized child /sar.)
Maybe in that this desire to have longer hair is to also symbolize personal growth. That if we can grow longer hair with a less itchy scalp (our hair is healthy enough, though we did not know that it was bad to wash hair everyday), maybe that could be an external symbol to the growth that will get when we go through more stages of our healing process.
What was done was needed to get us to this point.
We did try to grow out our hair in the past, though there is only so much growth that can happen when you were living with narcissists. (pun-intended).
Now this time, maybe things will be different. It does feel like we are at a precipice, after all. Not knowing what our future will look like. Things can get better, or worse, or stay the same.
Hopefully we will get to the point in which our parents and family don’t have as much power over us. And we can not only learn how to take better care of us holistically, but also have the means to do so.
Dealing with personal identity expression that is wrapped in trauma is the worst. Most of the people in our system like having our hair long and wearing skirts. It’s a very personal thing that goes back to our happiest memories. But long hair and skirts are also tied to trauma. And sometimes it’s hard to disconnect the two.
I hope your hair-growing experiment helps your system feel confident in self-expression, and in shaking off the ghost of who your mom told you that you were.