Last week, when I was in Salt  Lake, I went out to lunch with E and his coworkers, all of whom are pretty awesome. We have lunch every few weeks, in fact, and it is always lovely to see them, even when everyone starts talking about work and coding and callbacks and the business and my eyes glaze over.  It had been awhile since I had lunch with them, though, because one of the first thing E's boss said to me was, "So, is that your natural hair color, then?" I could not remember what hair color I might have had, the last time he had seen me. And it's been a while since I've done anything at all, with my hair, and I wasn't really sure what color it was right that second, anyway, because I hadn't looked particularly carefully in a long time.

Instead of explaining that, though, I said, "No! It might be close, though! I haven't seen my natural hair color since I was 14!" And this is true. When I was 14 years old, I finally convinced my mother to let me dye my hair platinum blonde. She wasn't going for the Mohawk, no, not at all, but the platinum would be okay. And my hair took to it like you wouldn't believe, and I stayed blonde for the next few years, and sometimes I was blonde and permed on one side, shaved on the other. My high school graduation photos are very hilarious.

Around the time I got out of high school was when I found Manic Panic, and then I spent the next few years dying my hair pink and green and purple and blue. I was really bad at it, so I also spent those years with a pink and green and purple and blue scalp and ears and sometimes, when I was particularly ham-fisted, a pink or green or purple or blue neck and shoulders. My aunt would sigh, every time she saw me, and tell me that I would be bald before I was 30. I did not believe that. I kept bleaching out and then dying my hair colors that made me happy, until I graduated college, and had to find a real job. And that's when I started on the boxed colors.

I've been every permutation of red there is to be from strawberry to copper to The Little Mermaid. I've enjoyed a range of browns from golden to chestnut to burgundy, as well as every subtle nuance of black from midnight blue-black to shoe-polish black, and I usually sneak back into blonde every handful of years. I have always done it myself, because it is so ridiculously expensive to get your hair done in a salon. You can tell that I do it myself--10 years of cracking open a box and massaging the crap onto my skull, and I still haven't quite gotten it right. I miss spots. It's not a good look.

I am lucky my hair is strong, and resilient, stays healthy and shiny no matter what I do to it, and I am not bald yet, because I'll keep dyeing from boxes. I can't afford to do it any other way, because I do it so often--every time there is something that makes me restless, uncomfortable, strange and unhappy in my life, I get the urge to dye my hair. Sometimes twice in one month. I am very aware that sometimes, what I'm obviously trying to do is remake myself, to change myself in some superficial way that I'm hoping with sink down through my scalp and past the plates of my skull and into my brain and fix me, make me better, some how. Or try to find the real me, who has got to be a redhead, because she is obviously not a brunette because things are working out pretty poorly, right now, with all this brown hair.

When E's boss asked me if this is my natural hair color--it's brown and it's got red it in--I realized it had been forever since I had colored my hair, or really had paid attention to it. Early March, I think? And I was happy, because I thought, look, tangible proof that I really am pretty damn happy! Or maybe just way super busy. But of course the question had me going to the mirror and examining my hair and thinking hey, maybe it's time to go blonde again! I'm going to find myself in the hair care aisle this afternoon, I know it.