Take Everything That’s Meant for You (day 96)

With my eyes tight shut and my heart beating fast in my chest, I listen as she describes for me the unique texture of my hair. It’s dense but fine, apparently. As she speaks, I can feel her breath on my skin and tiny blades of strawberry blonde pricking the top of my nose and my cheeks as the scissors slice away the front of my long mane. I’m nervous and exhilarated by the feeling of not knowing and not being able to undo what’s happening.

They say women get bangs when they are fresh out of their minds. Emotional distress bangs I once heard them called. This makes me smile to myself because people love to call women insane. They love to turn fun shit into all kinds of manic speculation about her fragile mental state for their own entertainment. Sigh. And so it is that I got bangs at ninety-five days sober and on day ninety-six I could not be more in love with them. They are thick and long and graze the tops of my dark eyelashes. My stylist refers to them as ‘French cut’ and so I cannot help but wonder if Paris should be in my near future simply because it sounds exotic and playful and crazy.

We spend a lot of time denying the light within. A lot of time denying the darkness, too. Equally dangerous is the denial of either. This thought occurs to me at random and while I can sense the depths of this dazzling revelation in the essence of my soul, I am more immediately distracted at the moment by a persistent headache I can only assume has been brought on – hilariously enough – by the non-alcoholic white Zinfandel I treated myself to last evening. Tannins or some shit. That’s why I was always a Sauvignon Blanc girl. What a lot of nonsense. I just wanted something pink swirling around in a gorgeous goblet in my hand. I can’t stand this headache it’s so not worth it. Fuck wine – boozy or not. How in the whole wide world did I ever put up with so very, very much worse for so very, very long.

NA drinks are fine and whatever. But I pour Pellegrino just as happily. The thing is it’s all head games. It’s all marketing we absorb through the skin and into our bloodstream into our mushy twisted brains. I’ve had the wildest dreams since a few weeks ago. Not while sleeping but while awake, like the kind of dreams they always talk about in motivational bullshit that I always wanted to experience but for some reason couldn’t. I never understood when someone would say “What are your big dreams?” I want a German Shepherd which is a fuck lot of dog for a tiny thing like me. I want to march my body right out of the office job that doesn’t even come close to scratching the surface of exploring all the juicy creativity which is bubbling inside of me. I want a life of good interesting artistic work. Some kind of soul electrifying, meaningful, deeply kind but jarring, disruptive thing. A thing that vibrates and surprises and comforts and challenges and shimmers.

When I decided I was getting sober it was a deeply rooted decision which happened in a flash but over a decade. That is to say I had wanted it for so long but then finally just did it suddenly without flinching. I wanted my sober date to be 1.1.22 which is significant for numeric reasons, symbolic to me of angels all around. And I will turn 44 this year. It all means something inexplicably beautiful to me. Something drenched in magic and promise.

So I just fucking did it. I wanted it and I took it. For myself. Everybody else’s opinions be damned. Isn’t that how all decisions must be made if you are to live your own life? On your own terms?

I mean, I got bangs for fuck sake. Clearly I’m out of the mind they wanted me locked away in and into my own now. Can taking everything else that’s meant for me be that far behind?