Hair
They say that hair holds stories, that the style is what makes a man.
They say long locks make you a pansy and a real man should have it short lest they be mistaken for a girl.
Where I grew up, every man buzzed their hair down.
It was a shame for it to be long and shaggy, and mothers would fuss over you, insisting upon a haircut.
For girls, it was fine.
They could have hair as long as they wanted or as short as they needed, so long as it wasnt buzzed as short as a man’s.
Being anything else just wasn’t a thing round these parts where churches chimed every sunday, pastors clammoring around resturants and filling their quotas in a single lunch.
So I buzzed mine.
I tried as hard as I could to seem as manly as possible
To appear as bull of a brute as any cowboy should.
I wore all the boy things and had all the short boy hair.
My scalp was sensitive anyways, so I thought it didn’t bother me.
It was better shorter.
Wasnt it?
I still gazed and clammored about the anime boys I saw on screen or in Otome games though.
I gushed about how pretty they were with hair down their backs like a silken curtain, or whipping wild through the air like the mane of a lion.
Legolas was never deemed as not manly enough
Beither was Zen or inuyasha or the undertaker.
A crush, I supposed.
Because of course thats all it was.
I was a gay little boy with gay little crushes and my type was men with long, Beautiful hair.
Right?
My hair was a dull, discolored brown from the shimmering blonde it used to be, the blonde I remember from kindergarten.
I tried to return to that blonde with bleach.
My school didnt allow unnatural colors, so anything was better than that matted, oily brown.
Shaved short and as platinum as a ken doll, I should have been as man as ever.
4 years, I stayed like that, and while the short hair was easy to take care of, I felt as hideous as a pile of sludge.
It didnt matter if I was loved for my looks, I supposed.
Wouldn’t that be too vain of me?
Boys weren’t supposed to care about what they looked like, they werent supposed to coo and admire Beautiful hair or seethe in jealousy that their sister looked so much better and has such long, goregous hair.
It wasn’t until after high school that I began to explore.
Covid let me grow my hair out more, though I still trimmed the sides.
I let my bangs grow long and shaggy over my face, like a veil to hide me from the world.
Eventually I dyed it again, this time going with that green I had always wanted to try, the one I had seen on my favorite youtuber growing up, fluffy and emerald.
Still, for years more, I kept it short. Only allowing that fringe to hover over me as some sort of style.
Recently though, I’ve realized I want that hair that those anime men had.
I want that soft curtain rolling down my back like waves of an ebony river, flecks of mossy green dotting it like a miasma of toxin flowing through the oily black stream.
I want the hair like the ring girl
The people around me are foolish and prudent to think the length of ones hair makes you more or less of a man.
I know that now, and I’m glad I do.
I want to stop pretending not to like things
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is it strange to genuinely not know what people think of you or how they feel about you? most people seem to just know if someone dislikes them so they can move on, or they just know when someone enjoys their company and is their friends. I have no way of knowing without people explicitly telling me, and people are horrible at doing that.
I don't know what my first impression gives. I don't know what vibes I have or what type of energy I have. I can't tell if someone hates me, doesn't care about me, or genuinely likes me. I can't tell what people's opinions on me are, if they think i'm nice, funny, rude, boring. I don't know if i'm bothering or annoying someone. I don't know if i'm upsetting someone or making them uncomfortable. I don't know if they are comfortable around me. I don't know if they enjoy my presence. I don't know if they are being fake nice and fake friends. I can't tell when someone loses interest in me. I cant tell if someone is trying to be a friend or is just being polite. I don't know if i'm easy to get along with, or difficult to be around. I don't know if my presence fills someome with joy or annoyance. to make it worse, each person thinks and feels different things. so i'll never figure out all of them.
if I try to think about what my presence and existence means to other people, i'm met with a massive blank hole. there's nothing there. I could never answer the questions "my friends/family would descove me as ___" because I genuinely don't know. I can only say what I think of me. unless someone explicitly told me with clear words, i'll never know. i'll usually know how I feel about another person at some point, and I try to tell them if I have the chance. but it's never reciprocated. they never tell me. so my presence in other people's lives is always a blank enigma I can't figure out.
any time i've tried talking about this, I just get a response like "stop worrying and caring about what other people think about you/just be yourself that's all that matters"
that's not the advice you think it is. that's more of what you'd say to someone who beats themselves up because they are worried about people disliking them in general and it fills them with anxiety to be disliked. they usually have low self esteem and think their worth lies in other people liking them. that's not the case here. hate me if you want, I don't care. i'd just rather know upfront before investing my time and energy in you.
this type of "caring what others think" is more about human connection, rather than acceptance....I wonder...is one reason I struggle to connect with people because I can't feel the presence of their feelings towards me? all I know is they are aware of my existing. thats it. try being in a group chat and not knowing if any of them actually like you or secretly hate you, not knowing if they are your friends or just being nice, and not knowing anything about how they feel about you, but you enjoy them very much. I try to share inner feelings with them, but theirs don't reach me. so I wonder, do mine even reach them? somewhere between us, the connection fails to reach. perhaps this is one of the problems i'm having with connecting to others.
if you don't know what people think or feel towards you, how can you connect with them? either you make assumptions, like "I think they hate me" and you could be wrong and push away someone that thinks you're friends, or think "i'm sure they enjoyed talking with me" and they later tell you they were just being nice but never wanted to talk to you becuass you're annoying. but assumptions are dangerous because those reasons, so the only other choice is to assign a blank slate to them and wait for them give you words to write on it. but if they don't use their words, they stay blank. you will never know if you are making a connection or it's staying superficial.
it's selfish to only go off your own feelings towards someone. you could really like someone, want to be friends, want to hang out and chat, but if they don't feel the same way, you just cause them problems and inconvenience. you bother them and ruin their time. i've noticed people often won't be direct about that and get even more upset because I missed it. I thought we shared a vibe or similar energy. but I might have mixed up my feelings with their vibes. if I like someone and enjoy them, not knowing how they feel about me can lead to me wasting my time and energy and also annoying that person unknowingly. it's bad for everyone.
if you can't assume the worse or even the best, you have to assume they feel neutral towards you until told otherwise. the problem is, most people go off of subtle hints, but if you can't see those, you get left out. while neither good nor bad, neutral feelings are still that of strangers. if you can't read people's thoughts and feelings on you, but it's rude to ask or people don't tell you the truth, you end up with many neutral people in your life. many strangers.
is this normal? do other people have an idea of what someone feels about them? or do you all "not care" what they think and go off of how you feel about them instead? is everyone making guesses, or do most people actually know without asking? how do you bond and feel connected if you aren't sure if someone enjoys your presence or if they actually loath it? I truly don't know....all I know is, not knowing makes me feel very disconnected from everyone.
I haven't gotten anyone else to talk about this or seen anyone else talk about it. so there's a good chance it's just a me thing. this type of topic usually gets reduced to "stop caring what people think" and goes nowhere beyond that. but!!! I think it's actually important to be able to know what people think or feel about you!!! at least to an extent. not obsessively caring to the point it becomes a mental disorder like social anxiety. but just enough to at least know if you are actually making a connection with them. just enough to know if you are able to reach them....
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