Q

I’m homesick already.

I miss waking up to the white noise of channel 8 and vehicles, the sticky afternoon heat. Every morning i rise mechanically at 7am sharp and feel a little lost. Now i’m free to leave and go wherever i want without having to account to anyone, but i can’t be bothered to. Single room corridor kid cooped up in a nine meter squared space. I miss dancing in and out of rooms. I miss the ancient out of tune piano and my sister’s violin practices. I used to hate questions in the morning, but now i want my grandma asking me what i’d like for breakfast (without fail) once i emerge from my room (now i queue along with everyone and deal with the tasteless scrambled eggs). I worried about communal showers, that i might have to wait around to get a stall. It’s funny how things work out though – every evening level 12 is a ghost town. It’s like no one visits the toilet – otherwise they’ve worked out a way to visit it when no one else does. Toilets are always for me only, whichever time i choose to use them. Disembodied voices rise up once in awhile, figures float in and out of the doors along my aisle but i never catch their faces before they shut their doors.

I was excited for lessons, and i still am. But i may have overlooked one minor detail.. that WORK. CAN BE CHALLENGING. It’s only the first week and i can tell i have lots of self-studying to do. Lectures have been alright (if not fun) so far, mostly thanks to Rhordonna people around all the time so i don’t feel so small and lost and scared. If there’s one thing that worked out right it’s that i found great friends in my OG. We’re gonna tiong it up and get that 1st class honors.

And yes, everyone. I cut my hair.

I now resemble a) a small boyboy b) a 5 year old Japanese girl c) a Japanese boy in a wig (but a pretty one k)

The regret sunk in almost at once. And by at once i mean the second the hairdresser closed in his scissors on my 500cm hair which has not seen a salon for a good couple of years (i do my own fringe). Nay, i lie. It was before that. While waiting for the dude to get ready i looked at myself in the mirror, still in my mermaid hair glory, and thought ‘i look fabulous. what the hell am i doing here?’

But it had to be done at that point. I needed change to counter the amount of sheer shittyness i felt. Thing is: i don’t cope well to changes. Huge environmental upheavals, whether positive or not, is always a rug yanked from my feet. I need to feel in control of myself and my position, changes don’t go easy on that. And once i feel myself orbiting away from absolute control – i panic and lose all of it. After a week of particular intensity, i managed to grope my way home (haven!) and collapsed.

The next morning i woke up half-dead and with that terrible aftertaste of fatigue in my mouth. Received a text in my daze from the boyfriend, mentioning a haircut. And i knew i had to do it. So before i was fully lucid, and before my morning balls of steel waned, i ran down to a mamashop barber and said: just cut short.

…and you know how it went down from there.

While i’m getting used to it now, there are some regrets (mixed feelings on them though).

a) I feel much less attractive. You can’t deny science, and science says people find girls with long hair more attractive.

b) Swishy hair is good for theatre and dance. Which i plan to try in NUS if i’m not overloaded with work and other life shit. So with this hair i have to work twice as hard on anything that can be achieved with less effort (because hair makes everything look better) (unless they’re growing on your upper lip).

c) This is so wrong, but the primary purpose of mermaid hair is to use as a shield on days you’re too lazy to wear underwear (for me, all the time) (and it’s decent since i’m flat as hell anyway).

At the same time i knew it had to be done, and although i wasn’t immediate conscious of it – short hair serves some purposes.

a) For practical purposes, short hair means less shedding -> less room clean-up angst. And a faster drying time at night so i don’t have to mooch around for hours when i could be sleeping (i don’t use hairdryers).

b) With mermaid hair people tend to see you as bimbo first, and anything else second. Sometimes they get stuck seeing you as a bimbo. But i’m anything but that. I’m intelligent and talented and also incredibly humble. I want people to look at my FACE and what i do or say, not in general: as a long-haired girl. I don’t know why but people do that. I do that too. Hair distracts. And detracts.

c) For the first time in years, i can walk through a crowd of Bangledeshi without them cat-whistling at me and by God, it’s liberating.

I miss everything old terribly, terribly much.. my own room; my hair; my leisure time; my friends. But i’m coming to terms with things and realizing that it might turn out to be something i’d love and would grow to miss very much in the future too.

In the mean time.