When living in a teeny tiny town, wouldn't it be better to have a color that blends in and to try to be as normal as possible? Well, maybe. But one thing that I have learned is that no matter what you look like and what you do, when you live in a small town like this, people will analyze (actually OVER-ANALYZE) every little thing you say or do. That being said, should I bother trying to keep my head down and fit in, or should I dare to stand out in every way possible?
I chose the latter of the two.When living in Indy, the only concern that I had about my appearance was what my boss would let me get away with. And as long as I was clothed (even in sweats) and capable of doing my job, he never gave a damn. When I started going through more hell than I could stand with my ex-husband, I experimented with color... I tried red and pink and even platinum. They never fit. I had my secrets, and I didn't dare to talk about them, but I had to find a way to get them out. Purple was it. I found this gorgeous shade of purple one night when I was getting my hair styled and told my stylist to forget everything else, THAT was the color I wanted!
In case you all don't already know, the official color against domestic violence is purple. They make these awesome purple ribbons for it, but I never liked ribbons anyhow. My hair stood out more than any ribbon ever would anyhow... After going through everything I went through, the first thing that I did was reach out to women that I knew were in similar situations and that I had a feeling were going through the same thing. I helped some of these women get out of their situations and helped them find a safe place away from the abuse that they were used to.
When I finally got out of it myself, I tried to hide that part of me. I went home and thought that I could slide right in for a little while until I knew what I was going to do with my life. Within a week though, everyone around me knew the innermost secrets of my life. They knew the hell I'd gone through and I felt so exposed. I thought that I would never get past that. I once again experimented with coloring my hair and tried to be the normal person that had never been hurt that I knew most of them wanted me to be. It didn't work. I finally went into a dark phase and just stayed brown or black with my hair, anything but the natural blond, because I knew I'd never be that girl again.
My old boyfriend had a fit when I dyed it purple once and we had to go to church with his family for his niece's christening. I pulled it up in a clip and ignored everyone's stares while we were there. I actually made a friend in the preacher's wife who thought that I was amazing with my way of words, my vulgar mouth, and my "different" appearance. I went back to the black hair to keep from embarrassing him anymore. After he and I were over though, the game was on. The first experiment that I tried was black with cherry red, blue, pink, and purple. It was amazing. I did a few different things until I finally settled back to purple, sometimes a more subtle purple than others though.
As you can imagine, there are plenty of people that ask me about it. I've shared my story with many women. The guys that I've been seeing, it's harder to talk to about it all. Perhaps I'll start directing them to my blog so that they can read all about it.
I will say that I feel confident that I am finally helping people... My big ass mouth online and in person has inspired a lot of people to make changes in their lives. It's funny that purple hair seems to have made it so much easier to talk to people. People don't expect me to be perfect and to have led the perfect life. Although, I know how to spot more people that have been through the same shit as me... I look for the ones who are doing anything they can to just look and feel normal. As long as I feel like I'm helping people, I'll never try to be normal again... Let's face it, I'm about as sane as your favorite nut house patient anyhow...
Well folks, that's all I got for ya. Time to start packing up stuff for Thing Two's birthday party tomorrow.
purple never tried purple but i have had my hair be neon orange but thats b/c i had maroon and my friend bleached it b/c i wanted it back blonde and when she did out came the orange and it was neon orange for a day. i was red for 7 yrs but last mth decided to get my original hair color back and so i had it stripped in a healthy way of the red and it turned my hair back to my original blonde color. the red just reminded me of my past the whole 7 yrs of pure hell and back that i went thru. yea me and you should talk one day. i can tell ya about abuse myself but not sure how mine follows under yours.
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