I loved the idea of doing something out of the ordinary with my hair before it all fell out because of chemo, I just loved it. It felt like a “fuck you” to the treatments that were going to save my life but in the process of saving me make me sicker than I’ve ever been before. It felt like I was telling the universe that if I was going to have to battle my way through this I was going to do it with pizzaz and flare. These thoughts kept me hopeful that I could still be me despite being ravaged by cancer.
I decided that I was going to dye my hair purple because purple evokes a safe and joyful feeling in my heart. I’ve always loved purple and all its variations – plumb, amethyst, lilac, lavender, eggplant! All its shades are beautiful to me! When I was in high school I painted my room a creamy lavender and I remember thinking there was no possible better color to paint one’s room. I never dubbed purple as my favorite color, I just wasn’t as wild about it as I was wild about green. Purple is up there though, neck-in-neck with orange, but just below green in my color preferences. When I was young, like 5 or 6, there was a woman that went to our church who was obsessed with purple. Her dedication to the color showed itself in her car color, decor choices, wall colors, clothing choices, and hair color. This woman embodied purple. I liked her so much, she made me feel safe and the way she dressed made me feel joyful. Purple just felt right.
I also decided to cut my hair into a cute pixie. The reasons were two fold:
- If I cut my hair short before it fell out I would have a bit of a transition period between having long hair to having no hair.
- Dyeing dark long hair a completely different color would cost a fortune so getting a pixie cut was financially responsible.
I would only be 16 days post bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction, but I made the appointment anyway. I was determined that I was going to be able to sit in the stylists chair for the hours that would be required to dye my hair the color I wanted – purple. I used to work in a salon when I was a newly wed (when I knew everything but nothing at all). I would listen to stylists complain about clients that wanted crazy colored hair but would bock at the price and time required to make their hair dreams come true. I knew it was going to cost lots of time and money and I was prepared for both my body and my bank account to be sore.
Normally I would be stressed about how much it would cost and what the upkeep expenses would add up to, but this time I didn’t concern myself with the cost or the upkeep. I was just going to do it, I was going to make an investment in me and my mental health by taking control of something! I was to feel like I had no control over my body, no agency in what was happening and what was going to be happening to me in order to eliminate the cancer. Making a drastic change to my hair gave me just enough control back to keep me from circling the drain of these cancer treatments.
My bestie, Emily, said she would go with me to keep me company. The whole thing was her idea in the first place so she had to be there. Want to know how long she sat and waited while I got my hair done? FIVE hours. Isn’t she great?
My stylist, Brittany, is a force of nature. She enters the room and it comes alive! Her life is so interesting and chaotic to hear about because there’s always some kind of legal thing going on, some kind of injury that the doctor’s aren’t paying enough attention to, or a new animal that she adopted! Her life is so lively! She is so lively! She’s also equally interested in my life and there is always something to report with our brand of chaos so conversation flowed easily. We had a lot of time to talk too!
I tried not to think about the pain, but I was in a lot of pain. I was being brave. Emily, Britany, and I chatted and then got to work. It was going to be a process. First we had to rough cut the hair, just to get most of the length off. This was harder for me than I expected. I really loved having long hair. I felt beautiful and feminine. I loved the way it felt when it brushed my arm or spilled over my shoulder. This was the beginning of an unknown amount of time that I would have short hair or no hair. Something else lost to cancer. I smiled anyway. This was my choice to cut my beloved long hair, not cancers.
Next we had to start the bleaching process, because you can’t just dye dark brown hair a vibrant purple. You have to lift color before you can add vibrant color. Maybe this was a metaphor about what this cancer process was going to do to me, for a while it would lift my color but when it was over there would be a vibrance I’d never had before. The middle wouldn’t be very pretty, ugly in fact, but the ugly would be worth it because of the vibrance that was achieved.
Like I mentioned above, this was a 5 hour process. Emily served as the snack securer and ran errands to get us things like smoothies and buttery soft pretzel nuggets, a combination that had me by a choke hold since I had been diagnosed with cancer.(I tricked myself into thinking it was a complete meal… All I need to do was have some protein added to the smoothie and I was good to go!) I don’t remember much of the 5 hours, but I do remember just how difficult it was to make my body move in the ways I needed it to. My pectoral muscles were on fire because it’s virtually impossible not to use those muscles! I had no idea! My incisions felt tight every time I adjusted my body weight but it was the worst when I laughed. I kept trying not to laugh and finding myself unsuccessful. In spite of all the pain and lively conversation I was smart enough to take some pictures to commemorate the experience. I’d been forgetting to document things after my surgery, I was too focused on healing. I’m grateful I remembered because these pictures tell a story of a woman choosing to be vibrant, choosing to not let the color permanently leave my life.
Here’s a pictorial run down of the whole process.
When my hair was officially transformed I took these picture.
Do you see how joyful she looks? Do you see how proud she is of herself? I do.
I didn’t care how much pain I was in, I needed to take this hair out! Emily and I decided that a sushi dinner out would provide me an opportunity to peacock (show off) my new purple hair. I felt confident, I felt good, I felt beautiful, I felt like myself. I didn’t feel self-conscious or bashful, it felt completely natural. THAT has never happened to me before, I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable after even a minor change in my appearance but this time I felt bold and unashamed. God, that is such a good feeling.
I also felt drained and exhausted from the process. My body was throbbing and my legs were heavy with fatigue. I asked a lot of my body that day and she was not happy with me. Emily took me home after dinner and all I could think about was getting high and getting in bed. But first I had to show my family my new look. Everyone loved it. Eliza said I looked really cool and purple looked good on me, which is HUGE coming from a teenager. Jojo asked if she could dye her hair purple too. The boys had the cutest smiles on their faces as they looked at me and inspected their mother’s new look. Chris reacted exactly as I needed him too, with excited enthusiasm and a hungry look. He really liked it.
When all was said and done I went up stairs, got ready for bed, popped a pain killer and rested my tired body. I didn’t fall asleep right away, I was still buzzing with astonishment of what I had done that day. I actually dyed my hair purple, I was living life as much as I could while feeling like death. I was proud of myself.