I'm Not Doing "It" Anymore - The Addiction is Over!

I am sick and tired of doing it.

I have been doing "it" for 22 years, and I'm done! I can no longer be a slave to this act!

Doing "it" requires dedication and a devotion that I just don't have the time nor the inclination for.

It can sting, it can burn, it smells, and most of all it's messy and uneven. I never feel like doing "it" but have to set aside time, because, let's face it, I have to keep up the act.

What is "it" precisely?

Dyeing my hair, of course.

(Get your minds out of the gutter, please).

Yes, when I was 23, a friend convinced me to go with her to a salon for a hair trim. Somehow, that day I lost my virginity. (HAIR virginity, that is). This girl convinced me to "play with color." I was afraid. I had very dark auburn hair, thin and curly. I had been pulling out LOTS of gray hairs since they started coming in at the ripe age of 15; precisely four years after I got my boobs.

(This is my life).

Anyway, the hairdressers - (that's what we called them back in the 1980s; now they are hairstylists, but I digress) - were happy to get me. I heard "Wow! A hair virgin! This is amazing!" I'd never had a perm or color, only cuts. This was my first time. I was getting "all over color" the same as my original color, but it would cover the gray.

Thus began a long, horrid cycle.

I call it horrid now, because over the last 22 years, I've been almost every color under the sun except the color I really am - GRAY. Not just gray, but 75%

gray - and it's really silver - with 25% brown left.

I wondered how to do this. I wanted to know how to GO GRAY.

I thought about shaving my head. Really. That'd be easy. Painful for a while, but pretty natural, right?

I have been many things; add "Beauty school dropout"to the list. (I didn't want to touch other people's feet, so I quit).

Anyway, I remember one thing from beauty school - (not how to cut hair, unfortunately) - but the phrase "Line of demarcation." This is what hairstylists call that lovely line that is where your real color, or your roots, meet your dye.

I have been trying for about 20 years to keep up with my NEVER seeing that line.

Each year I dyed, I got older, my hair got grayer, and the line showed up earlier and earlier. When I was 23, I got to "play" with and dye my hair about every three months. Two months ago, I was down to HAVING to dye it every 16 days. That's how white my hair is, and it's been that way for the last two years.

Oh, at first it was fun. I went to a SALON! It was my monthly thing. About 10 years ago, I lived in Ohio, found a fab salon and was such a monthly regular that I actually made friends I got to see and catch up with each time I went to get my hair done! I was a "Thursday Nighter" on the third Thursday of every month!

Back then, I had no kids, and well, was pretty in to myself in terms of caring how I looked (to some degree).

Back then, I didn't HAVE to go; I liked it. I experimented with frosts, highlights, low lights, all over color and the like.

As the gray came in, I could less afford the time and the $$ it took to get this done.

Then I became a mom.

Then came what I like to call the NO-CHOICE era. I had no choice but to buy a box and slap some color on. If anyone taller than my 5'1 1/2 inches could see that "line" and I'd be off to the drug store for a box of color. Lots of times I couldn't find the same color, so I had to have a NEW color. And I figured, "Heck, since I have to change it anyway, why not go from brown to RED - "I Love Lucy" style, or to dark brown?" (By the way, for you box virgins, BEWARE: "Dark Brown" is really pretty much BLACK once it's on your hair).

Either way, I was addicted to the experimentation.

In the beginning I wanted it to look like my hair wasn't dyed. I just wanted to cover the gray.

Then, it got so I didn't care if one day my locks were dark brown, and the next it was frosted. It was an adventure to shock my neighbors and friends. "Hey, wasn't she just RED yesterday?"

"Why yes, I was, thanks."

Then, it got messy.

For the same reason I quit smoking, I wanted to quit dyeing. (No pun intended).

When I smoked, I was a messy smoker. Cigs would roll out of the ashtray, burning things. I had to quit before I ruined more furniture.

Such was the case with dye.

With hair dye, I'd dye in my bathroom, and suddenly, there'd be streaks of black gook staining the walls, floors, toilets; gross. I have dye stains in the last seven houses I've lived in.

I had to quit growing my hair. It was too much! And guess what? Another beauty school lesson? Color DEPOSITS on the ends of your hair. I was often a medium brown from the part on the top of my head to about an inch from the ends, where my hair was JET black because all that color soaked into my dry, burned ends.

Often, I'd dye my hair and there'd be big stains left on my ears and my forehead as well. Only this year did I learn that if you put Vaseline on your head around your hairline, you can prevent that. In my case, I needed to Vaseline my whole bathroom along with my whole body because I'm a slob with dye. "Accident prone" if you will.

So, I caved.

I asked a young and hip hairstylist how to do it - how to GO GRAY the Natural Way.

"You can color it to like, platinum blonde, but that's a huge deal and you'll still have "the line" she says.

"No, don't want to do that."

"I can have you shave it off and start fresh", I say. "I don't care."

"You don't want to do that."

"I think I might."

"How about we just cut it really short? I have lots of "older" ladies who go gray and I give them this cute cut, and they look sassy!" She says. "You can just throw some gel on there, and off you go! Be funky, spike it, whatever!"

"I don't want to look like Susan Powter" I say.

She says, "Who's Susan Powter?"

"DO IT" I say. If she doesn't know Susan Powter, I'm too old and I SHOULD be gray.

She CUTS.

It is short. I guess short is better than bald.

I go home and I look at the back of my head in the mirror. I realize how much I look like my brother, and I'm glad I have boobs, or you might not know I'm a girl. (My brother's handsome, but he's a GUY).

I go again two weeks later. SHOOOORRRRT!

I have one more cut, and the dye is gone. In two weeks I go back, get that cut, look like my brother for about another month or so, then I'm DONE.

I cannot tell you how freeing it is. Seriously. Like a huge weight is lifted off my head; literally.

I had a box of Loreal Preference in my closet; I chucked it, after saying a little devotional:

"Thanks, Loreal, Thanks, Miss Clairol, for all the fun years we had together; but I'm done, done, DONE with you! There are lots of women who need you - go now and spread your color to the ladies of the world who have not yet gotten to where I am today which is SICK OF DYEING MY HAIR!"

I feel great after I chuck a full box in the garbage can. Then I wonder, because the box says, "Contents under pressure" or something dangerous like that, and I think, "What if the garbage truck blows up with this full box of dye in there?" Then I get smarter..."What the h@ll kind of chemicals have I been putting on my head all these years? What kind of brain damage has been done while I've been "experimenting?" Screw the truck! What about my brain? They can always get a new truck, me a new brain? I think not.

Just today, I told my friend Judy excitedly that "I only have one more cut to go and I'm all gray!"

She says, "Yea, but you'd better wait a while, your hair is REALLY SHORT."

"I don't care," I say. "When the gray comes in, I can grow it to my heart's content."

She says, "Yea, but now you look like you have a crew cut."

I'm thinking that bald would be a lot more noticeable, she'd really comment if I had done that, so I count myself lucky and I say, "Not quite a crew cut, but short, yes."

"Waaaayyy short!" She says.

"Well, whaddayagonnado?" Gotta do it somehow, right?

Now I have golden ends (the last of the washed out dye) and patches of white mixed in with what used to be brown. It's really quite trashy, frankly, but it's MY CHOICE. From the back I look bald because the hair is so short and so white that it looks like my hair matches my scalp color. From the front I look like, well, my brother. Glad he lives far away or there might be problems.

Now, for once, I'll be the "real me." That feels GREAT!

And, no, my eyebrows haven't sprouted gray at all, in case you were wondering. They've stayed true to my natural color all along, thank God!

Now, that one chin hair is something I've got to work on...

Cheerth!