Taste the Rainbow

They called me Skittles in high school. Not the whole 4 years, mind you. Just Junior year, when I dyed my hair for the first time. My cousin, Olivia, helped me. We bleached it first, since my natural color is so dark - a really dark brown that often gets mistaken for black. Then we used Manic Panic, a temporary dye. We did red, orange, and yellow streaks. When I pulled it back, the colors radiated outward from my face in a fascinating manner. But when I left it down, you could only see the red streaks on either side of my face. It was very cool. Manic Panic washes out very quickly, but the initial color is vivid and beautiful. I have a few pictures of that hair style, but I don't have any digital versions.

After that washed out, and I just had the limpid bleached out yellow left, I re-did the coloring job. This time, I used purple and red. I left a space in between the two colors. I have a few pictures of that, digitally:

That's me with Olivia. I call her Livvie. I even type that into my phone, or into the Facebook search, before correcting myself to use her full name.

After that, I did normal brown hair again. Then, about 2 years ago, I started back to re-dying it funky colors. But this time, I did my whole head. I started with pink:
I have gotten much, much better with the make-up. And those eye-brows. Yeesh. After that, I had to dye it back to brown until I moved in Russell and out of my father's place, where I'd been living for the summer. Next was turquoise. I consider turquoise my base color. I kept going back to it, as you'll soon see. Here was the first time:
Even this first time, I incorporate some pink, in stripes, from the temples. I often did this. Pink, sometimes purple. Sometimes both. This led to another nickname, Cotton Candy.
I gave myself bangs!
Sometimes I spiked them up with gel. This picture shows one of the times I did that, and clipped back the rest of my hair so it looked shorter.
What it looked like down. (Actually later that same day the picture above was taken.) Here are some other incarnations of the turquoise/cotton candy look:

I did every color of the rainbow. One for each month, for a year. I cut my own hair during this time. I bleached my roots when they grew out, and I used a permanent dye called RAW, which wouldn't wash out like Manic Panic, but instead would gradually fade and then grow out with the rest of my hair. I did red, pink, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black.

I loved having dyed hair. It made me feel unique and weird and different and artsy. I was called Rainbow Lady by all the kids I came across. The kids I nannied for loved it. It was expressive. I was lucky to have jobs that allowed such expression. First, at Hot Topic in the Asheville Mall, and then with the nanny position. My co-workers at Hot Topic called me Rainbow Brite because of my constantly changing hair color and tendency towards candy-raver-esque clothing/accessory style.

But, ultimately, it was bad for my hair. The follicle was fried, and wouldn't lay down, not even with deep conditioning.

I dyed it back to brown, in late 2008 and let it start growing out. I had to get a job, after all. Most places won't even look at you if you have funky hair. In May 2009, I had it cut professionally at Galina's, here in Asheville. From there, I let it grow out. I don't have bangs anymore, what with it being something like 9 months later. I need to get it trimmed, get rid of the last few bits of colored hair.I can finally put it all up in a pony-tail. It's so exciting! This is what it looks like now:


I used to have really long hair, in my youth.

I kept it long up until Sophomore year of high school, at which time, I cut it (myself, mind you) in a fit of rage. I had this mind-fuck of a boyfriend, name of Flint:

And he kept badgering me to cut my hair, change my clothes, listen to different music, watch different movies.... all in order to be more like this chick he was in love with from Vermont. I forget her name, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore. The thing is, when we finally broke up after being together for something like a year, I cut off a big chunk of my hair just to spite him. It looked like crap. I tried this layering thing and I had no idea what I was doing. It just cluttered up the frame of my face and looked dingy and crowded. I wrote a poem about it: A poem originally written in March 2002, in which I was contemplating suicide while cutting all of my hair off. This is the revised version, which I released on deviantArt a while ago.

A Hair Too Close To Real

Just one last thing before I go
The memory of that first kiss
To cut away the long black silk
To watch it fall through the abyss
My eyes will cry what they still may
My heart can't yet take that away

To confusing faces, my face turns
In all this anguish, something burns
Even for the fear of death
I will draw my last breath

Watch now, my weightless apparition
Leave me as I start to transition
As feet lift from the cold hard ground
And seen through mirrors, heard through sound
See darkness, torment, an evil sight
The strands of black upon skin so white
Shown eerie through reflections of the night

Take twin blades and cut away the years
Take away the memories
Take away the fears

If cut too deep the toll of flesh is paid
Damned spirit of a teenage girl, in sorrow made

Forgive me running far from here
From everything I was held dear
And leave to me just one thing, this
The memory of that first kiss.

And so, we've come full-circle. Back to high school! I dyed it for the first time a year after I cut it. So I guess you could loop this entry and just keep reading it, over and over again. But I wouldn't recommend it.