I reflect on myself as a little girl; delicate furls collapse atop my head in frail contortions so that it is only sickly whisps of red covering my skin. I had too little hair for a girl with such a passion for hair accessories. I wanted so badly to hold ties and clips with my hair and feel the leisure of a light thread brushing against my neck. I longed for hair big enough to coat me in womanly grace. To envelop me in its explicit narrative and endow me the fullness of my role in life. Its lavish body would fix me into my delicate position in this world, and It would suit me. I wanted it to be long and pretty; I wanted it to be complete. That is to say, I wanted it to grow. Naturally, with growth, I assumed, came satisfaction, fulfillment of myself; a fantastical realization of me. With this maturation, I had expected a soothing coherence of the ostentatious and irregular respires of sensation and feeling I had known life to be thus far, and of course, longer hair. Yes, surely this day would come with growth. But before then I had to wait, languishing in my incompleteness and believing only when I reached this day would I be relieved of it. For every moment was not as true and completely good as the moment my hair was long and I was big; the moment I came into myself. So I sat, with a restless gaze, fidgeting, and longing for this moment where I might be sure. So that I could finally be absolved into steady goodness and ease. This is how I felt: a constant discomfort and unwholesomeness until the time came when I was fully my right and absolute self. And so I waited.

My hair grew long and pretty. It grew deep with experience; it had become calmer with time and browned a wise, rich shade of its once wild red. I could now feel its delicate tendrils caress between my shoulder blades, an intimate becoming of my body. It is just as I had wished. But what is this? I realized, that despite my becoming - I was still waiting. Still unsure and unwhole in myself. The feelings of doubt and unsteadiness had not subsided; I had not become a being of profound awareness, nor felt certain of my identity. In fact, I had not reached any absolute certainty of any kind. But my hair had reached record lengths. So, how can I be fulfilled and not feel fulfilled? The itinerary of my understanding had been sorely violated. The schematics of my feelings, totally miscalculated. The rate my hair had progressed was so far ahead of my expected epiphanies and profound realizations that I was beginning to become concerned. Maybe this was a scheduling issue. Maybe I had not matured quite right or at the right time. Maybe my body was rushed and early, so induced by my eagerness. Maybe there was something wrong with me, and an even subsequently scarier thought - maybe it was my fault. I bargained with myself, and finally decided to wait some more. It was edging on my 18th Birthday, and these feelings, no matter how many times I reached relentlessly for totality and pureness, never gave up their dissonant dances through my mind. Their shrill flux flared in me still, inharmoniously and seemingly with no end. There was no climax to reach a conclusion, only constant and futile fluctuation. My hair was long and it had been long and I had waited for such a time that I began to question my perspective itself. Anne Rice says in her novel, Violin, “So hair does stand on end, even when you are lying, all crushed in your own hair on a pillow, with one arm flung out… Yes, my body went into its little war with my mind,” maybe this war was in me. My body growing and plumping while the ever chaotic unresolve barely fills me out, still. Such fear, present with such leisure. Such doubt present with such prosperity. How could my body be so definitely bigger and my experiences no more sure? Different, but not any more absolute. A flat-lining change compared to the exponentiality of my physical state. And so here is my body lying, with one arm flung out, the plump face of fullness. And here is my mind, standing on end. My body, fulfilled, and my mind in the same wanting state in which it had always been. Disparate and unsure, I was becoming an adult. Grown, and yet with the same existential understating and wonder of a child. In this unfulfillment, I began to consider the length of my hair may not be synonymous with my attainment of the absolute knowledge of the universe. I began to meet a new perspective. I began to think of my wish for long hair, and what I had really wished for: the absence of this ever-present uncertainty. The feeling I assumed would come with the length of my hair - catharsis. A sweet salve to the dogged ache of doubt. This ever elusive sense of completeness and void of insecurity I was longing for I had associated with how big I was, how grown up I was. Because grown-ups know things. Right? 

Having just turned 18, I can impart to you now the great sagacity that comes with the endowment of adulthood. It is - that I lack, still, the omniscience and certainty for which I have so long waited. And in lacking, I question if such a state is even attainable, and I think, maybe I never will find sovereign sureness and feel total relief. I question the linear hierarchy of growth and knowledge; maybe there isn’t a definite path leading to absolute rightness in all things. Maybe there is no one thing more right than the other; maybe everything simply is. Maybe existing as we do now involves a wondrous, eclectic garland of experience and sensation, and there is no end to these inflections of chaos that erupt in us, the arrhythmic and sudden swells of feeling. Maybe there, in this incessant uncertainty, is a choice to allow such discomfort to exist as a part of this experience. Because maybe life is not meant to be one good thing. My answer - now that I am big and my hair is long? Well, I am not certain, and I don’t know that I ever will be.