Not About the Hair

 I am sitting at a coffee shop, writing away, when a man comes up and says, "Some hair!"  Now, currently I have very bright, crazy red hair.  I mean it's the color of freakin' beet roots.

Beets.  Pretty much the color of my hair.

I get comments on my hair on almost a daily basis.  Mostly positive responses:  "Love the hair!"  "I wish I could pull that off."  That kind of thing.  I figure those who don't care for it or think it's obnoxious mostly keep those comments to themselves.  That whole, "If you can't say something nice" idea.  This man had me thinking though.  It was hard to know what he meant by "Some hair!"  Was it good hair?  Was it bad hair?  Did I care?  I pondered the thought; why did I color my hair such a conspicuous color?  I came up with the idea of identity and concluded it's not really about the hair specifically.  If only those strangers around me knew the real reasoning behind my vibrant locks.  I felt a blog post forming!

Psychologically speaking, I don't know why some of us have a deep need to have a tangible identity.  For me, I need some way to distinguish my "self" from the billions of other people on this planet.  What I do know now is that for many years I was trying to obtain this sense of self by doing the only thing I knew how to do:  be tiny.  Since I realized at a young age that I would never be the smartest, the prettiest, the richest, the most athletic, the best at this or at that, there was this one thing I knew about myself.  I could be small.  Now this may sound extremely shallow to a great many people out there.  Hell, it sounds shallow when I write it down!  However, contrary to what many people believe, being anorexic is not about being vain.  God knows I was far from attractive when I was at my sickest.  Being anorexic was about many things: control, depression, repressed feelings, self-loathing, attention, wanting to disappear, etc. (I will go into more of these in later posts).  Anorexia also became about sustaining an identity when I didn't feel I had a valid one.  Kristy is thin.  Period.  Even though I didn't always see this in myself when I looked in the mirror, I got the confirmation I needed from others.  "You're so thin."  "I wish I were that skinny." and so on.  All of this helped fuel the fire of my identity crisis.  If I am not thin.  What am I?  Who am I?

In recovery these comments I had grown to need, stopped.  When I reached a healthy weight and I no longer had anorexia as my identity, I still had the need to know who I was.  I am one of 7 billion human beings after all.  So is everyone else.  In treatment many of us were struggling with this dilemma.  Now what?!  We had all been sick for so long that it was impossible to know who we were outside of our disorders.  So began the long task of reaching down deep within myself.  I still knew I could not be many things and I accepted that.  But what was I already?  Who could I be?  This was scary and daunting but I was also hopeful.  Oh the possibilities even for me!  I could see this attempt to redefine identity all around me.  Some of us got piercings.  Many got tattoos.  We colored our hair.  Took up new hobbies.  New identities were being explored.  Some people may judge these attempts to find ourselves as silly or juvenile.  I thought it was beautiful.  There was so much creativity and excitement in those who chose recovery.  We were stretching our wings.  We got to choose something else.

My friend Danielle's recovery tattoo.

So here I sit with my beet red hair shining bright.  To some it is just a hair color.  A silly phase along with my nose ring and this blog.  For me it is much more than that.  I get to try on new options.  I started volunteering.  I am writing.  I am actually accepting that I am artistic.  I started advocacy work.  I have a lot of opinions and I am pretty outspoken.  As for the hair, people often ask me if I will keep it this way.  I will for now.  It is a healthy expression of who I am at the moment.  I'm the gal with the red hair, along with many other things.  That's me!  I am not anorexic.  I am finding myself and my freedom.  What will I discover next?  I can't wait to find out.



Live on!

-Kristy