The Offline Mind

…She is about to change her life.

Six years ago when I left their father I dyed my brown hair (auburn, my mother called it, with affection) for the very first time in my life. I know, how cliche (changing one’s hair colour after a divorce, life event etc). First blonde, then red. You see the blonde didn’t seem to take me far away enough from the person in the mirror. I could still peer into my own shadow’s eyes. She was constantly dusting her hands, as if consumed with the thought of “getting up to go”.

Blonde me still said “yes” in breathlessness. Blonde me was the ballerina turning pirouettes while the gaslit theatre was on fire and everyone had evacuated but the show must go on. Blonde me was one last ditch at “why didn’t you love me?” 

And they don’t tell you how much work it takes to really go blonde, either. You sit in that chair a few hours at a time waiting over the course of weeks to feel a thing you hope you’ll feel. Blondes have more fun, that’s the saying. But blonde didn’t work on me, it wasn’t working, so a few short weeks later I went back to the chair and said turn me red. 

Red. The colour of power. Of sex. Of blood. Turn me red! I said. I wanted to feel capable of sudden renegade, cunning thoughts, evil beauty, last glances. And so she turned me red. I was red when I left home, when I left all my belongings, took my children, left the country, left nothing behind but long brown hairs clinging for dear life to a Persian rug and an “World’s Best Mom” mug that rang with emptiness like a bell. 

I was red when I finally cried. It was fading at the time, sort of a rust colour, and I felt like rust. I was something left out in the rain and now you couldn’t set me down anywhere.