My grandpa died. On my birthday. I haven't seen my grandpa in a year an a half. He usually sends a card that arrives early and says something about how he's sure I'm doing well from what he hears from my dad. I haven't seen him since his 80th birthday party, right before I donated my hair this last time. I don't think my hair cutting had to do with him, it was more about the non-relationship relationship I had with a guy I was seeing/not seeing at the time.
Cutting my hair off has been a therapeutic thing for me over my lifetime. I've done it after some of my most difficult breakups since I started dating in college. I've noticed that even before I was donating my hair I was growing out my hair for/in spite of others like of it and that I would cut it off for myself. I guess that's why donating it seems such an intricate part of my process, it's something I'm doing for/because of the effect that others have on my life.
When I was a kid I kept my hair long because I didn't want to keep it short the way my mom had kept it (before I was 5), but I also cut it off just before my 12th birthday because I wanted to choose a change in my life. Before I had cut off my hair that time, I had gone through something that children shouldn't have to be exposed to. My grandfather was a big part of why I did not feel like I had full control of the things I had gone through back then and why cutting all my hair off seemed like a good thing to take control of instead of the way he tried to have control in his life.
Control over my hair is an easy thing to manage. I can keep it long, cut it short, grow it out and people can have opinions on it and maybe influence the way I style it because I like their opinion, but I ultimately get the choice of when I do what I do to it. No one else can change that for me in a way that will affect me the way that my grandpa's decisions and my own dating experiences have.
I can trust my hair to always be straight and to never hold a curl for more than a few minutes without a gallon of product. I can trust my hair to grow back after I cut it off. I can trust my hair to be healthy because I control the nutrients I give it through my diet and the care that I give it. I know that if I don't eat right and don't wash my hair properly and don't get it trimmed it will be damaged and have problems, but because I have complete control over that I can trust the consequences to be exactly what I expected from my own actions. I can't expect that from other people. My own interactions with them may or may not go as I expect, there's no precise science about how the abuse I went through as a child has affected my relationships with men. There's no gauge showing how much of what has happened in my dating relationships has been affected by the abuse I was exposed to, how much was due to my decisions, and how much is due to the decisions and life history of the guy I was dating.
I haven't always made good decisions in my dating relationships, some of it was due to not knowing the difference between affection and lust which has ties leading back to abuse. Some of it could be attributed to my own desire to sacrifice myself to give the other person their desire of that moment so that I could make them happy in that moment because I knew they weren't happy in the relationship with me and I didn't want to be part of that sadness at that time. That feeling of being at fault for other people's feelings and a desire to solve it with affection/lust also stems back to abuse. BUT, it isn't about where the problem lies and how it will continue to affect my life: it's about how I am cognitive of that problem and the things I am willing to do to break the cycle for me. What am I going to choose to do that will help me be a healthier person in or out of a relationship? How am I going to prove that the anger and resentment about what happened isn't going to be something that I allow to grow back and chop off as my mood dictates? I can't stop that I will continually grow, even if I want to, but I can make what grows healthy or unhealthy according to the decisions I make. Along the length of each strand of hair it shows how healthy or unhealthy I was taking care of myself during that moment of growth. Whether my hair was affected by a day I skipped breakfast and ate ramen, ice cream, and junk for dinner or a day I ate breakfast, green smoothies, and a balanced dinner, it's more about how I style what I has grown and how I treat it right now that shows how I am dealing with it in the present.
So, my grandpa died. I can't really close a door to hide his skeleton in a closet. I deal with what happened every day. It's about what I do to style what has grown from it and take care of the portions that are unhealthy, as well as how I make sure that the new growth is free of the problems were in the past. I guess technically we have hidden his skeleton six feet under, but the portion of me that was affected by him can be trimmed and treated with the nutrients that the healing of my Savior's love provides to me. I may never have perfect hair or a perfect life but I can make what I do have become beautiful through time and my Savior's love.
I may not donate to the charity he requested people to donate to in his memory, but I will choose to donate to a charity in memory of my relationship with him. I will donate for the cause of me, my cousins, and others who have suffered and are still suffering from child abuse: http://www.stopitnow.org/donate
