Painted Hair
“She’s getting her hair painted,” I would exclaim as a kid as I watched my grandma get color in her hair at the beauty shop. I spent many hours there on Saturdays. I would actually hang out there anxiously waiting for The Sharper Image in the same plaza to open so I could spend my time sitting in massage chairs, playing with remote control cars, and touching all the other cool gadgets they had. Though I’m sure they weren’t excited by my visit, the guys in the store always let me hang out.
The same person who would color my grandma’s hair would go on to shape her wigs for her when she had cancer, and would mourn the loss of her when she passed away 20 years ago. And the same woman still does my mom’s hair and my sister’s hair and mine too.
Though I’m possibly the black sheep of the beauty shop family, I’ve always felt comfortable or at least comforted in her chair. She would do my hair for my Bat Mitzvah, for my wedding, and yesterday she would give me a cut and highlights.
As I sat there under the dryer with a head full of tin foil that she had “painted,” I thought how much I wish some parts of my brain could be painted over, and others could be highlighted.
I thought about how for me what my hair looks like, whether it was longer, or a pixie cut, or the Dutch boy or whatever I had going on, I rarely felt like a woman in my own hair and yet yesterday I sat there and for the first time really felt the beauty in this whole beauty shop thing, in the experience, in being able to be proud of a feature, of the way I look, of being able to own it and like it, and be part of the decision, how it seems that feeling like a woman, that being in charge of who I am and taking responsibility for the choices I make are things I am a late bloomer at, things I’m still working on, and that sometimes being a late bloomer means it comes a lot harder to you, but hopefully you appreciate it even more.
My grandma used to say the phrase “For beauty one must suffer,” and while it seems she meant it about outward appearances and the things women go through to make themselves attractive physically, for beauty one must suffer is really a mantra for how we figure out who we are and what makes us feel like our most loved selves.
In A World Where You Can Be Anything, Be Someone’s Tim Gunn
How Coping with Suicidal Thoughts has Helped Me Cope with Trump
“You know, we all get to be survivors in some way in our lifetime.” – Eunice Galsky
I keep thinking about this quote above from my friend Eunice. She wrote it to me while she was battling cancer and I was battling mental illness. The fact that she said we all get to be survivors, not “have” to be or even will be, but “get” to be, like needing to survive something awful is a gift. Eunice died from cancer but she also survived it.
I have spent the majority of the last two years surviving constant suicidal ideation. When people ask me how I am doing now I say “I got healthy just in time for the world to go crazy. And I am grateful.” I am by no means grateful for the crazy world, in fact if you told me last year to keep working on getting healthy and you will get to see a Trump presidency, I might have bowed out, this awfulness is not what I am grateful for. No, I am grateful that I am healthy enough to fight, and protest, and take action. And to be there for others.
And because I have fought these voices I will tell you this, the voice of suicidal thoughts and the voice of Donald Trump are the same and can be fought in much of the same way.
Like Trump, suicidal thoughts are loud, and mean. They are full of hate, and they try to convince you listening to them is all that matters. They present you with alternative facts. The say “Look at me, I am big and powerful and winning, and you are Sad!”
Everything this voice says is a lie yet it is so confident you start to believe there must be some truth to what it is saying, that he will make your problems go away, that if you do what he says you will feel better. But you stop and fact check and realize there is no truth in what this voice is saying, and remind yourself of that over and over and over again. You realize your job is not to get rid of this awful jerk of a voice but to take away his power by fighting for the good shit, by finding a supportive network, a network that allows you to complain about how awful and hopeless and shitty this feels while also pushing you to fight for the better you deserve. You find tools that work for you like opposite action, the idea of fighting the inertia, the desire to just crawl in the fetal position and say I’m done, by choosing actions that can make a difference for yourself, this word, for somebody else, because you know helping others can never make you feel worse. And at the end of the day you realize it’s about making it to the end of the day, and the next day and the next, knowing you are in good company with all your fellow survivors.
The One After the Break-Up
Thankful
As I watch while it feels like parts of the world are crumbling, As I see people struggle, people ending their lives, people trying to make it through, I think “I’m experiencing and witnessing a lot of awful stuff, I could fall apart and nobody would blame me, it’s happened many many times before.” And then I realize that it’s different now. I’m healthier.
I’m grateful for that health and I’m grateful for the doctor who has helped get me there. For over a year she has worked with me. She told me “I will sit with you in the uncomfortable. You won’t scare me away.”
She didn’t have the pop culture references I appreciate but I let it slide because she seemed to have other skills that were helpful. We got to the root of a lot of the suicidal thinking I have been struggling with for the majority of the past four years, and more accurately, most of my life. I went off meds for the first time in a long time and have stayed off them. She helped me deconstruct everything that was going on, taking apart all the Lego bricks of my brain that were built on a faulty structure. There might even be more bricks to be taken apart before the rebuilding happens. But a lot of good has happened.
And then this doctor who’s helped me so much, we broke up with each other. And it was awful. I couldn’t afford to come and I couldn’t get the closure I wanted from her. It left me hurt and angry. But I didn’t tailspin, and that’s because of the work I have done with her. So I am grateful.
Things are still not put back together but sometimes the tearing apart is what’s more important. I know I wish it all could have ended differently, but as we celebrate Thanksgiving it seems like a time to remember we can be grateful for things even if they don’t always work out how we hope, even if we get hurt. And also to acknowledge even though she helped me immensely, I was the one who chose to take apart the bricks, to heal, to do the heavy lifting, and I am still that strong being.
