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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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short hair power

OK. So let me start out by saying that I am OK!

I apologize for the last note. It was at the beginning of my period at which I am always a nutcase, and I'd spent the previous three days completely alone--and I work alone most days at the office at the moment, anyhow, as my office is removed from the others and I'm wrestling with data...

Too much time spent alone makes a girl...lonely.

All it took was for me to mention to a couple of people that I was feeling lonely and I am currently awash with invitations.

Plus my hormones have leveled out and my stomach appears to have done so as well.

I suspect that all of my recent problems have been stress-related.

I'm trying to be more consistent with my runs as well, which always aids in leveling out my moods.

So everything is good.

And on the style front I have decided that Maggie Gyll3nhaal is my new hero. I like her quirks and I like her best with short hair...which brings me to my all-important conclusion:

After all of the FUSS, I think that short hair might in fact suit me better than long! My friend Ava confirmed it for me last night. (Oy, I am a moron!)

The problem prior to this was that I'd taken commentary on the suitability of my hair mostly from men.

And lord knows that a woman can look dreadful with long hair and that a man will almost always still prefer it.

Ava, for example, prefers wearing her hair short. But she wears it longer than suits her for her husband's sake. She still looks pretty but she looks GORGEOUS with her hair shorter.

Men are silly.

So I think that this is a good revelation; it is a tremendously powerful realization. If, indeed, short hair suits me better, I'm thrilled. It's cheaper--as long as one doesn't keep it super-short and require frequent trims--and it's SO much easier.

I realized at dinner last night that another reason that I clung so aggressively to my long hair was that when I was growing up my mother always cut my hair short. And dressed me in all things denim and corduroy. I didn't have a dress until I begged for one in high school.

And my mother always gave me bad haircuts with crooked bangs. And she made me wear necklaces that she'd macrameed along with the denim gaucho suits that she had sewn. Crookedly.

Does it not make sense that I am now self-conscious about my appearance?

The other, more damaging thing that used to happen when I was a kid is that everyone told me that I was plain, if they said anything. No one ever told me that I was pretty.

The first time that anyone ever told me that I was pretty was in high school. I had a teacher say something to the effect and I was completely taken aback. Who, me?

All I remember my mother ever telling me was what an awful nose I had. And how sallow my skin was. And how I didn't have a nice mouth.

Funny that she never mentioned that I have beautiful eyes and long eyelashes.

The first time I ever heard that I had beautiful eyes was from a woman with whom I worked.

Anyhow. Doesn't matter. But Ava and I were talking about this last night and she said that her sister has had the same difficulty throughout her adult life. She has grown into a handsome woman but she thinks she's ugly. Simply because when she was a kid no one ever told her that she was pretty; all of that attention was saved for Ava.

And Ava said that she had known, even when she was 12 or so, that when strangers had complimented her they should also have said something nice to her sister. And she had felt shame over it.

So there's an endless debate: Should we ever tell ANY girl that she is pretty? Or should we try hard to identify and praise the beauty--in all forms--of everyone?

I mean, I know that my scars have very little to do with my looks.

They have more to do with the fact that one day my grandparents starting fighting over money with my mother, and then soon enough I was 18 and receiving a call from a lawyer to tell me that my father had died. My grandparents had not thought it necessary to call me to his deathbed; furthermore, they had failed to invite us to the FUNERAL. I had to go to the university library to PHOTOCOPY my dad's OBITUARY.

They were evil people. And they rejected us for no good reason. For money. For resentment.

When I was 14 my dad and my grandmother had come to take much of our furniture and valuables when my mother was out at a university course. (I was babysitting my two younger brothers.)

And in spite of the fact that my grandmother and I had done many, many things together when I was a child--that she had taught me to paint and taken me to the Royal Ontario Mus3um and the ballet and for a ladies' lunch at the Park Plaza, more times than I could count--she stood at the end of the driveway of the rather shabby townhouse that my mother had been able to purchase on the bad side of town and didn't speak to me. Her rich, miserly husband had forbidden it.

And that was the day that my belief in myself ended. It was the day that I knew for sure that I was unloveable. And every day after that in high school I would wait after class had let out and all of the kids had gone down to the cafeteria and I would sit in front of my locker doing math problems with my long hair slung over my face and my notes so that no one could see that the tears refused to stop.

But that day has ended. I can look back at all of that with much clearer eyes. And when I go over and over the things in my head and look at them as an adult I know that it was never my fault.

And every day I can take one more small step forward in recognizing myself for the valuable person that I am.

This evening I sponsored a W0rld Visi0n child. I've always wanted to do that. A girl in Africa. And not because I want letters or gratitude or attention for I don't--that makes me squirmy. I just want some little girl somewhere to go to school. I think I'm going to sponsor another child, but one who has AIDS. The girl is coming back on Friday. There probably are better ways to do this sort of thing--give to the bed nets program and to the Stephen L3wis Foundation--I already give all of my budgeted charitable contributions to Doctors Without Borders--but today I felt the need to connect to an individual person somewhere else in a small way.

I feel better, somehow. I feel newer.

I was looking around for information on WV and I found this really cool story on this website about charitable giving (I hope it will forgive me the indecency of cutting and pasting): "I know a story of a woman in Calgary, Alberta Canada. Her two sons were killed in a car accident a number of years ago. One of those events in life in which there are no answers, no reason, nor rhyme. The death of her sons left with a gaping hole in her heart as large and lonely as a vacant lot. So she picked herself up from the ruins and did something about it. She set up a memorial fund and started cooking Christmas dinner for friends and family. When dinner was over, she asked them to donate to the fund. That was 22 years ago. Well, this past year, she served 1,500 turkey dinners under a big-top tent and raised thousands of dollars for the local homeless shelter. She covered that ugly vacant lot with a huge beautiful tent."

I like that. La vita e bella.

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9:57 p.m. - 2007-06-13

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