Over the weekend I spent two days {yes, two days…that technically ran into a third} dying my hair.  This isn’t a new thing since I dye my hair quite often.  It’s my way of taking control when I feel like my body is out of control or even just because I’m bored. It’s something that goes back to when I was about 15.

I’ve talked before about how I was finally diagnosed with PCOS last year. After years of feeling like my body was out of control for no reason I finally had a reason.  I’m still working to take full control of my health {currently on the hunt for a health coach to work with} but when I was in my 20s and watching my weight climb and my periods get worse and not know why I had to take control of my body in some form.

When I was 15 I had dyed my hair a pinkish red for the first time.  It was mainly because I was in love with Miki Berenyi from the band Lush.

 

 

It wasn’t my whole head, just a chunk of the front.  At the time I had shoulder length hair and no bangs, so I parted my hair down the middle and took all the hair that framed my face on the left and dyed it Pillarbox Red.

My Mom wasn’t terribly happy because I’d done this a day or two before my birthday which often falls around Easter.  That year my birthday and Easter were in the same weekend.  But this would be just the beginning of my adventures in “alternative” hair, clothes and makeup that my Mom would have to endure until…well really she’s still enduring it.

As the years would pass I’d dye my hair red, black, purple, blue, green and several attempts at blonde and white.  I’d cut it, grow it and a few times shave it all off because I massively fried it with chemicals.

My feeling was always “It’s just hair but at least I have control over it.”  And that sentiment became even more true and important the older I got and the more my body got out of control.

When I talk about my hair and some of the reasons that I do what I do to it, people always ask if I have tattoos.  I don’t.  Not one.  And it’s not because I’ve never thought about it.  I’ve had whole sleeves worth of tattoos planned out in my head.  But the truth is I’m afraid of needles {one of my saving graces during my drug phase} and I have a hard time wrapping my head around how I’d fair for an hour having needs jabbing my body.

Instead of tattoos I opted for letting makeup be my other way of controlling how I looked.  Being that I was/am more inclined toward a goth look most of the time I felt lucky to have been blessed with naturally pale skin.  But it wasn’t enough…it had to be paler!!  So I became a big fan of Asian rice powders, white corrective foundations and even movie makeup that didn’t look too Halloweenish and could work for “every day”, in a matter of speaking.

And yes, black lipstick.  Urban Decay’s Oil Slick was always my favorite.  Just last year I got some again and have worn it here and there.

I also got pretty good at shaving off my eyebrows and drawing on those really dramatic goth brows thanks to the help of an ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend that taught me all her secrets.

This was how I dealt with my body that refused to cooperate with the vision that I had in my head of what I thought I should look like…and at times what I even thought I did look like.

My PCOS has since become a much bigger factor in my life, especially now that I know this was a big part of why my body was going out of control for so many years.  When I finally found out why I would occasionally get the sharp abdominal pains that made me feel like I was being stabbed made everything make sense.

The new problem has been treating it because I don’t do well with hormone treatments, so that’s why I’m now going through the process of finding a health coach to work with so I can address it with diet and natural supplements.

However, I’ve been feeling wicked gross lately.

When I moved back in June I put a hold on my makeup hoarding {if I told you how much money I’ve spend in the last year on high end cosmetics you’d die}. Though I did buy some stuff from Besame Cosmetics a few weeks ago after a 4 season binge watching of Boardwalk Empire and getting obsessed with 1920s makeup.

The problem is I rarely put on makeup unless I’m going somewhere and these days I rarely leave the house during the week {totally by choice, BTW}.  So I don’t need makeup.  But I’m feeling gross and a little out of control again.  What can I do?

Dye my hair!

Dye it a crazy color!

Do something I haven’t done in along time.

 

 

I started out armed with 2 boxes of Manic Panic bleach and 2 bottles of Pillarbox Red dye.  Note – I got this stuff 3 weeks before I actually did this.  It took a while for me to suck it up and do it.

 

 

I bleached my hair…which took both boxes of bleach.

 

I moved on to the Pillarbox Red.  I ended up using 1 1/2 bottles and still managed to miss a bunch of spots!  {Damn this thick hair of mine!}

And this was how it came out…

NO!!!!

NO NO NO NO NO!!!!

I didn’t want orange/copper.  I had this almost exact same color last year after I added Manic Panic to my hair when the dye job I’d had done at a salon started to fade really fast.  But at the time that was the point and I was specifically looking for this color. {For those Manic Panic Dye Hards keeping track I had used Wild Fire mixed with Electric Tiger Lily last year to get this kind of color.}

So Monday morning I hop on the phone, call the Sally’s Beauty Supply down the street and ask them if they had any Vampire Red.  I didn’t go for that originally because I thought it would be too dark.  It’s the darkest red Manic Panic makes and I didn’t want to it turn out a burgundy red.   {The model in this picture very clearly had a good lightening job done before dying with this this color.}

JOY!  They have one bottle.  They set it aside, I run down and grab it so I can come home and quickly get back to this.

The dye goes in and right away the pinkish red makes me feel like YAY this will be more what I had in mind.

Mind you…this image below is an ad for Pillarbox Red and is what I intended to start with…

Sooo…..WTF?!?!

But I left it in my 4 hours {because the longer you leave Manic Panic in the better it tends to take}.  This is how it turned out.

FINALLY!!!

Oddly, yes, this makes me feel a whole hell of a lot better right now.  Knowing that I at least have control over my hair gives me a sense of peace when the rest of my body is refusing to cooperate.

The Moral of the Story

When your body is going through something and you’re feeling out of control, it’s perfectly OK to find a way to feel like you have some kind of ownership of your own physical form.  It’s real easy to start to feel like your body isn’t yours during times of illness.

Dying your hair, getting a tattoo, whatever it is that makes you feel like your body is still yours, do it.  {With common sense, of course.}

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