Comfortable

A supermodel I am not.

I am never going to be tall and gazelle-like. I'm ok with that; I like being able to wear heels with any date and I love having curves. I like the shape of my eyes and the curve of my mouth. I love that I have long eyelashes. I've always liked the shape of my legs. And then there's my hair. The good Lord gave me some great hair.

I didn't always feel this way. It took me a while to get to a place where I liked what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

When I was younger, I remember wanting to have blue eyes and hating my olive skin. As a kid I was rail thin and then suddenly, the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I went from an A to a C cup in three months. It was horrifying. I wasn't even 100 lbs and I was walking around with a rack for which most of Hollywood has paid good money to attain. A few years later, the acne began and I can't even describe how hideous each and every zit made me feel. Somewhere around 10th grade I got some junk in the trunk which was nice because it balanced out "the twins" up front but not so nice because this was still several years before Jenny from the Block made it acceptable to have an ass. This was all about the time when heroin chic was...well chic, and creatures like Kate Moss were gracing the cover of every magazine. Needless to say, a great deal of my adolescent years were spent trying to figure out how to look less like me and more like...anyone else.

Sometime during my late 20's I found myself spending less time picking myself to pieces. I started to enjoy my brown eyes and the fact that my olive skin tans so easily. My curves made me feel like a woman. My ex-boyfriend once said, "You know what I like most about you? You're comfortable in your own skin." I grinned a little, as though I'd pulled off some great hoax of confidence when it occurred to me that *gasp* -I AM comfortable in my own skin. When the hell did that happen?

And now, six months into my thirties, I'm probably the most secure with my looks as I've ever been. Sure, I may still get a zit occasionally and there are always going to be days when I put on something and think "Damn, my ass looks huge today" but for the most part, I'm good with what I've got. And even on my worst days when I can't stand anything, I almost always like my hair. It's nice to always have that one thing.

So two weeks ago when I went for a cut and color I expected to walk out of the salon feeling great - the way I always feel when I get my hair done. Evidently though, my normal stylist had other plans. I asked her to take off an inch, clean up the layers and put an all over color on it to even out the grown out highlights. Two hours and $200 later I had the worst hair of my whole life. The haircut was shorter than we had discussed and the color was...jet black. I sat in the chair and looked at my hair while trying hard not to rip the scissors from her hands and stab her with them. I blinked hard a few times hoping that when I opened my eyes everything would be back to normal. But each time I looked in the mirror there was this head of craptastic hair staring back at me. I know it sounds ridiculous but I felt so UGLY.

The next two days are a bit fuzzy (because trauma can cause memory loss) but I have vague recollections of googling things like "how to get rid of dark hair color" and "how many washes to remove jet black hair dye?" and "when will the lambs stop screaming and my hair be back to normal?"

After a few more frantic searches I found the girl who was named the "Best Hair Colorist in Denver". I called her immediately and explained the whole awful story. I also explained that I had a date the next day and that I simply could not go on said date looking like Elvira.

"Can you be here at 7:15pm tonight?", asked Meaghan (aka The Best Colorist in Denver)

I got to Halo and Meaghan poured me a glass of wine. I took a long sip as she took my hair out of the ponytail and made a funny face as she examined the color.

"What did she do to your hair?"

"She had a mid-life crisis during my appointment, I think."

"Don't worry, Kendra. I can fix this."

And she did. Meaghan took the mess that was my hair and fixed it all up. It's shorter than it's been in a long time but the color is perfect and I no longer look like goth chick.

My hair looked pretty good for my date with the lawyer (more on that in the next post)...

...and I'm back to being comfortable in my own skin...and tresses.