Vanity

This whole concept of vanity has been sitting with me as of late especially as I start to move into the process of letting go of my hair. My hair has always been an identifier for me. It’s how I imagine people describe me, “you know, Kim, tall and skinny with brown curly hair.” This week in particular, I will start to shed that part of me.

I have been playing with different hairstyles as I work my way up to no hair at all.  And that has been fun to find styles I might have not had the balls to do before. I will get my first cancer haircut this week and truthfully I am excited about it. Excited to try something new with absolutely no commitment.

I also have been grappling with no hair at all and how that will look. I use my hands to cover my head at my forehand to mimic being bald or try on different head scarfs and hats. I love to play dress-up and experiment with ‘my cancer look.’ I still can’t completely wrap my brain around how it will be not to have hair on my head. I also wonder about my eyebrows - will those go too? I love my eyebrows and can’t imagine my face without them. More unknowns.

For a large portion of my life, my identity was wrapped in how I presented myself to the world. And it had to be perfect. How I looked, what I did, where I lived, etc. The past couple years, I have been healing from all that perfectionism to find this inner soul who I truly love. It hasn’t come without heartaches and past conditioning of behavior patterns that are hard to break.

When I was little, I remember watching my dad get ready in our small bathroom. I would sit on the toilet seat and watch his reflection in the mirror while he shaved. He had jet black hair and a mustache to match, and I always thought he was handsome. I liked watching the shaving cream disappear from the pull of his razor into the murky sink water. He would gently tap the side of the sink to wash the whiskers away. Once he finished, he smoothed his face with his hands and applied aftershave that smelled of a flowery musk. 

He would look at himself in the mirror and then back at me and smile. He would wink and say: “You know honey, I can’t wait for tomorrow, you know why?”  

And I would say, “Why daddy?” 

“Because I get better looking every day!” 

I knew the punch line and often would repeat in unison with him. His eyes would light up every time.

I have heard that kids are more perceptive to actions than words. And where I know that my inner world is more important than my outer, I believe much of the shaping stemmed from what was coming in around me. Through no fault of my family, we were operating on what was the norm and still is in a lot of ways. And I can say the vanity is warranted in a sense. Plus, my dad is a good looking guy!

I reflect on this because I know I have used my external identity to move me though this world in a lot of ways. And now, it is going to be stripped away from me completely. In a sense, it is almost like a rebirth. Everything I externally identified with will be gone. In the same vein, I get to completely redefine and reshape. Perhaps that is why I am excited, because this time, I get to create the narrative.