The first time I dyed my hair I was twelve years old. It was a rainy day, and my mom suggested we go to CVS and buy some hair dye. I was in sixth grade, and a lot of the girls at school would always complain about how their moms wouldn’t let them dye their hair. That day I thought I had the coolest mom ever. I had quite a bit of fun with it when I got a little older. My favorite was when I dyed the under side black and had one random black chunk in my bangs. (When my hair gets a little longer, I’m thinking about doing that again.) The pink tips were also pretty awesome.

So fast forward to college. (I was pretty awesome in college by the way, but that is a story for another day.) I’m dating this guy. With whom I am completely smitten and just so sure I’m going to spend the rest of my life. His friend from another state came for a visit and the airport lost his luggage, so the three of us went to the mall so he could buy some new clothes. I picked up a nifty green sweater and mentioned that I liked it, and his friend said, “Why do red heads always like green?” To which the man of my dreams responds, “Oh she dyes her hair”.

I don’t know why that moment has stuck with me so clearly. But at that moment I semi-subconsciously decided that I was never going to dye my hair again. At the time I thought it was just to spite him, kind of an “I’ll show you, I really do have red hair!” But after that relationship ended (quite terribly I might add), I realized that I was not myself when I was with him. I would pretend I didn’t like things when he said he didn’t like them, and I couldn’t talk to him about things I was passionate about because I felt silly. At the time I didn’t see it, I was blinded by love so to say. Right after we broke up, I met my husband and he saved me from myself. Well, more like from my fake-self. It was a low point in my life for sure, but I’m grateful for the lessons learned.

For years though I didn’t dye my hair and it was a lovely shade of strawberry blonde. (Take that.) After I had Juniper, my hair started fading into this really lame blah color. I hated it and I thought it made me look old. Who wants gray hair when they are 25? Yuck. But I still didn’t want to dye it. One day I sucked it up and did it, but I felt weird about it. Like, yeah I’m a red head but I dye my hair. A few weeks ago I was back at that same point and I had a revelation. I was still letting this old boyfriend decide who I was. How lame is that?! So yeah, I dye my hair! And I LIKE to dye my hair and my wonderful husband just so happens to love red heads so it works out pretty great!

Um. I didn’t mean for this to be so long. The point is, I just dyed my hair and I love it. And I’ll probably dye it again and again and again. And now that I’ve realized WHY I felt so bad about dying it, I will never EVER feel bad about it again.

And watermelons are pretty amazing. The end.