Bangs

I know what you’re expecting…this supercute post on me cutting bangs and loving them/hating them/discovering cute up do’s…. What? No, that’s not what you’re expecting? Then you know me too well ;)

I got bangs. They look pretty cute thanks to my super awesome hairstylist.  I wanted something different and for it to look like I ACTUALLY got my hair done…mission accomplished. Truth be told, once they settled in after a couple of days, I do genuinely like them and I’m going to completely love them as they grow out and I get to play. Patrick even seems to like them (maybe because I said they were temporary). But before I came to that realization, something bad happened…I looked in the mirror.

For a good 24-48 hours after I got them cut, I completely froze every time I got a glimpse of myself. It was a bit unnerving honestly. It didn’t make sense…I actually look darn cute in bangs J And it took me awhile but then it finally hit me. I joke (although I am completely aware that it’s not a joking matter…I joke because I’m not entirely joking…) that I have PTSD about random things related to the rough years, including ultrasounds (when you have so many go bad…). So in a huge surprise to me, I have PTSD about bangs. Laugh now. Please, really, laugh, because I did after I got done crying. It’s completely ridiculous, completely inconceivable (ha…look at me being funny), and completely true.

I took a shower this weekend, and stepped out with bangs going every which direction…and was immediately and painfully thrown 10 years in the past. You see, 10 years ago next month, I found out I was pregnant for the first time. A week later, we went to my parents’ to tell them in person (you know, because tell everyone you know at 5 weeks, what could go wrong…). While there, I got my hair cut, and decided, of course, to get some bangs. They were very poorly behaved bangs to be honest LOL. I think it was about 72 hours later that everything started to fall apart. Pain, a general bad feeling in my bones, medical confirmation, an overnight hospital stay, and surgery…then I wasn’t pregnant anymore (the ectopic…).

This led to me…a few days later…stepping out of the shower…looking in the mirror…and finding myself completely and utterly unrecognizable.

I looked rounder than usual….thanks to 3 months of fertility drugs and gas that had inflated me during the laparoscopic surgery a couple of days before.

There were scars…3 of them…I could see them all in this lopsided triangle, sutures still visible.

There were those stupid bangs.

I looked nothing like myself. Everything about me was wrong. Everything about me had changed. Nothing would ever be the same…and it wasn’t.

I remember that moment so vividly. I’m fairly certain it was the first shower I had taken without supervision, the first day I’d been home left alone.

So here I was this weekend, stepping out of the shower and that image slapped me in the face. Maybe it was that I’m a little rounder than usual…I had more than a little stress this fall between major changes for Kellen, Patrick’s travel, and my grant proposal; my marathon training was anything but perfect; and my eating habits…embarrassing. But then there were those damn bangs.

And then I laughed. I laughed because for whatever ridiculous reason, Larkin is in LOVE with my bangs. She talks about my hair constantly, especially when I’m not around, so she just really loves it that much. And I kept laughing because the “old bangs” had lost so much…but the “new bangs” have a little mini-me super-fan that’s totally into the bangs. And then I cried…not because of the “old bangs” but because I thought of the day that I got my hair cut and went to pick up Kellen, having a momentary worry that he’d of all times notice my hair and react negatively, and instead…he did notice…and he kissed me…first on both cheeks (where I joked that apparently we were British that day)…and then purposefully put his hands on both side of my face, looked me in the eyes, and kissed me on the lips…twice. He doesn’t kiss on the lips. When you ask him for a kiss, he gives you his forehead…and if you kiss him on the cheek, he wipes right after. He didn’t wipe. He kissed me.

And so then I laughed and cried at the same time because the “old bangs” had sorrow and failing hope…but the “new bangs” had joy and laughter and…us. Time passes, things change, hair grows. No matter where you find yourself stepping out of the shower today, it can and will get better. Hope is powerful, and maybe I just needed that reminder.

Also, maybe I should remember that “grown out bangs” are a little more my style…Larkin may be disappointed J