minimalism: on discarding

nothing taught me about discarding like my hair.

i love long hair.
i've been growing my hair out with the intention of donating it after i got married.
this goal is written in all kinds of goal lists around my room.
i love braids. i love buns. i loved my long, curly hair.
i didn't want it short.

i never, NEVER thought i would have short hair again in my life,
but when i dyed my hair blonde last year,
in addition to my low-maintenance summer hair routine,
it just... died.

a year later,
and thousands of hair masks, hundreds of google searches,
and more attempted remedies and fixes than i can count,
i was still dealing with something past the point of no return.
it caused me daily frustration.
i could never wear it down,
i could barely comb it,
and it just felt like straw!

after hours of deliberation,
rather than trying to save my locks,
i said goodbye to them.

i could have completely kept on trying to save them.
i could have saved my long hair and kept braiding it every day,
but i didn't it.

i didn't give up.
this wasn't just a quick fix.

i gave myself permission to let go,
to rewrite my life,
to discard something dead
even when i didn't want to.

i mean... it's the advice everyone would give someone when in this situation,
but it's so difficult to do when it's you.

we aren't really talking about hair anymore...

discarding is a choice that isn't always easy to make,
but carrying around useless bricks in your pockets serves no purpose but to weigh you down.

if anything i have learned that
letting go is a choice. 

it isn't easy,
this i am sure of,

but making that choice was better than just waiting for things to right themselves,
because inaction is also a choice.
adhering to the played out "time heals all wounds" adage isn't the best decision sometimes.

shedding something dead and useless to me
empowered me to make that choice more often in the future.

guess what? i love my hair.
i am not looking back.

xo.