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the look i’ll be sporting for a while. :)

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tomorrow evening, this huge, ridiculous mass of hot pink hair will be gracing the floor of a local bar. 

i will likely have frostbite all winter. i’m excited to wear the SHIT out of some hats. 

i’d like to ask you, and anyone you want to pass this on to, for $5 of your hard-won money. times are tough. stuff is expensive. it’s yours. people already bug you for money. i get that. 

cancer is tougher. kid’s lives are priceless. stuff is never fair. 

http://www.stbaldricks.org/teams/shaeja

I’m not one for gendered expectations…

Originally, shaving my head and convincing my partner in crime to do the same was mostly a lark.

http://www.stbaldricks.org/teams/shaeja

As friday draws closer, questions I never thought I’d have to legitimately ponder are making me pause.

“are you going to miss your hair?”

A woman is supposed to be smooth, hairless, and soft. Everything neatly irradicated. Eyebrows sculpted, legs perfect.

the only exception is a flawless, maintained head of hair.

Let’s not mince words. That’s not me. I’m kind of a slob. I brush my hair if I need to dye it. I cut it myself, sometimes on front porches with friends, sometimes in the office washroom on a bad day.

My hair has been it’s natural brown. It’s been black. Auburn. Neon red. Purple. Orange. Yellow. Blue. Periwinkle. Magenta. And finally, it’s current bubblegum pink.

I’ve already subverted most people’s opinions of me, with my slow transformation into not-your-average-anything.

I’m honored to get the chance to continue doing exactly that, but for an amazing cause.

Stares and commentary on my sexuality and assumptions about my character are all things I have no problem dealing with. Say your worst, passers by.

It’s not chemotherapy and needles and that hospital smell for months. Your smirks or shakes of the head aren’t not knowing if your child is going to make it to see their next birthday.

So no, I won’t miss my hair. I have way more than that.

childhood cancer awareness month.

awareness months always weirded me out a little. i mean. i’m *aware* of childhood cancer. it’s a thing. it exists. but how do you RAISE awareness?

a really good way is shaving off all of your hair. especially when your hair is, say, bubblegum pink. or blue. perhaps it was neon orange at one point. 

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/photogallery/participantid/468622

i am shaving my head in honor of kids who have dealt with childhood cancer. and i think you should support that fight. 

here are some things about me.

i wear men’s cologne. specifically, the one my ex wore. 

i sleep with books in my bed in lieu of people as of late. 

i don’t have internet at my apartment. nor cable, nor a dvd player. i do have a tv. it is for playing video games.

a lot of the time my dinner consists of food of one colour entirely. usually orange or green.

the left side of my hair is about 3 inches longer than the right side of my hair because once in the midst of a need for control one afternoon, i cut a total of 7 inches off in my office’s washroom. 

i didn’t learn how to tie my shoes until i was in grade eight.

i don’t believe in god, an afterlife, souls, or destiny. 

i think gender and sexuality aren’t worth trying to define. i like women, i like men, i like people who feel outside of those two realms.

history is the thing i’m the most terrible at. 

i’m quite a good dancer.

i’m terrified i will never get to go home.

the current question is ‘what is the best decision you’ve made’?

the more bitter aspects of my personality shoved everyone else out of line, and jumped at the chance to answer impetuously. or perhaps the part of myself that just can’t believe i’ve actually managed to begin letting go of one of the weirdest, most needless parts of my life wants to speak up. 

while the safe-for-work answer i will provide is, truly, the basis for everything i am today, the actual answer i wanted to put is:

“leaving him to his made-up life.”

i have fought my entire adulthood against the imaginative lands i’ve created for myself in times of loneliness, in fits of daydreaming, or out of sheer need. 

getting sucked in was so easy. and to this day i love him more than anything i’ve ever encountered. 

but i want absolutely nothing to do with the things he seems hell bent on having in his life. the pettiness and the emptiness and the constant dissatisfaction. so i’ve gone elsewhere. completely alone and unprepared and terrified.

but happy.

so fucking happy. and ultimately, relieved. their well being is no longer something i have to care about. i’ll leave it to the supposedly better suited but somehow less capable hands. 

and i’ll fall in love and then destroy others in succession. 

it’s absolutely gorgeous outside and everything is alive, even my sanity. greatly altered, it will never do what it did for me before. but i am nothing if not resourceful. inventive and forceful, i have no choice but to alter everything in my path. in this whole thing, i am a catalyst for change. worship and damn me in equal parts.

don’t let me near you, i’ll change you forever. just ask the exuberant corpses i’ve left in my wake. 

what folly i commit, i dedicate to you.

originally, this post was going to be dripping with vitriol. 

originally, this post was going to be written directly after i read what you wrote. instead i lived a full day in my own interior before responding to your creation, your tell-all, your confession.

a painstaking reflection on your oh-so-shocking tale of being broken — your brief flirtation within the safe and allowable confines of temporary psychosis. 

honey, we’ve all had bad nights. there’s a line by a famously empty guy about how suicidal thoughts have been a safe harbor for many a person during many a bad night.

you’re not the first twentysomething to drift over that yellow divider line on the highway and wonder. 

you’re just one in a long line of many people in this generation who have the beautiful and terrible luxury of these breakdowns. these excursions into society’s ‘personality disturbance’ theme parks. make sure they stamp your hand for easy re-entry when things don’t go your way later on. 

perhaps i’m just jealous of your holiday inn express experience in the psychological disorders realm. ‘oh, depression? yeah, i’ve been there. the breakfast is actually pretty decent, but check out’s at 11’. 

somewhere, my chemical makeup, my synapses, my brain puppets — whatever you’d like to blame — have decided that instead of an electronic keycard to access my insecurity with and a mid-sized indoor pool of guilt to languish in for three days and two nights, it would prefer to lease a place and become a permanent resident. 

paying the utilities on insanity can be expensive, but you get to see all kinds of things others don’t when not just playing tourist.