I had my hair cut today. And not for the first time, as I looked in the mirror and nodded approval at the hairdresser, I wasn’t really feeling it. That neatly generic old lady in the mirror didn’t feel like me.
“Who are you?” I asked myself.
I’m pretty sure it was nothing to do with the hairdresser. My hair was nice and clean, if a little dry as it always is when I get it cut. The grey looks a little more even as I get older. The cut was as precise as I could have wished it.
And yet…
Hell, even I’d have called the woman in the mirror Ma’am.
Since the first post-lockdown cut, two years after my pixie cut, I’m no closer to deciding on a new Signature Hair Style than I was two years ago.
But as I thought about it, fighting the wind all the way up the hill, It wasn’t about the hair.
So if it wasn’t the hair (per se) what was it?
Everything else!
But as I try to think my way through this tangled big old ball of string. I get snarled up as I follow different strands.
Case in point; I walked down to the village and back again. According to my activity tracker, one of my fastest walks back up the hill. Without stopping for a breather on the way. I should have been ecstatic about that, but I wasn’t really feeling it.
Just finished an exciting and intensive writing workshop, and the writing is going well, but…
It’s not the usual end of summer kind of “could have done so much more.” With Corona infections going nuts (even if they are less severe) I don’t really want to be in closed environmental systems in museums, galleries or restaurants. Or, for that matter, with crowds of other people.
Perhaps it’s more along the lines of getting out of lock down, and finding it’s not as exciting as you expected it to be. Like the week after school broke up and you were bored witless with too many weeks of holiday to go.
And bored of your new toys by Christmas lunchtime. Snappish from lack of sleep.
Or that while the restrictions have ended, the disease rages unabated. Just keeps mutating and spreading the love that no one wants.
So who are you?
Not the same person as before.
Then again, I’m not sure any of us can claim to be the same person coming out as we were going into the Covid crisis.
Not that it’s over.
Is it a(nother) mid-life crisis? Am I just like every other adult waking up and wondering if this is all there is?
Am I clinging to the past because I’m afraid to move on?
Or is it the residual effects of the stroke? Is this as good as it’s going to get?
I don’t know.
But I do know I’ve got three months to choose a new hairstyle.
Photo by Keir In Sight Archives on Unsplash
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