Hair

My time in Germany is coming to a close, and I’ve been trying to decide how to write about my time abroad. It is the inevitable and impossible question facing me upon return: how was it? Before I came to Germany, people told me that this would be one of the best years of my life, and while that’s nice to hear, it’s also a lot of pressure to heap upon oneself.  In day-to-day life, I didn’t really feel like I was going through any kind of monumental year or best-year-of-my-life or even having the kind of experience I was supposed to be having–whatever that was supposed to be.

If anything, the past eight months have been full of paradox: full of excitement and adventure and anticipation-of-what-could-be but also full of loneliness and grief and disappointment-of-what-was-not. And somehow, learning how to live in the space between feeling immensely excited for life and overjoyed-to-be-alive while also feeling sad and adrift.

In the midst of that, I happened to be doing some spring cleaning and looking through old photos. I couldn’t believe they were from just last year–hadn’t it been like, 10 years? I felt a bit “Jo March”–suddenly nostalgic and wistful for my long, dark hair, which I chopped off last May. I hardly recognized myself. Well, how very cliche, but there it was– the physical representation of the change I’ve undergone in the past twelve months. A slow but steady progression to something new. And really, what better way to represent my experience abroad than by analyzing my relationship with my hair? [be warned: this post contains an unhealthy amount of selfies.]

My hair is the one thing I’ve always felt great about–one of the features I’ve let define me. Cutting it off felt important–something I needed to do at least once in my life. “Who was the sarah without her hair?” the scissors seemed to taunt me. So, chop chop.

For once, I didn’t have anything to hide my face behind, no glorious mane to distract people with. New hair opened up all kinds of possibilities. What kind of person did I want to be?

 

 

 

 

I arrived in Germany with short hair, sometimes forgetting that people who met me here had never known a different Sarah. I suppose short hair somehow made me feel more European, edgier, older. It was easier to pretend I was more confident because women with short hair aren’t the kind of women who mess around, are they? (if they can be brave enough to cut their hair, they can do anything!) People seemed to take me more seriously, but maybe I was just taking myself more seriously.

Some days I felt less feminine; some days I felt more. I got used to running my fingers through my hair and rumpling it up; it felt simple and free, more me. 

 

If anything, I didn’t expect my hair to be a subject of so many conversations. Men certainly had lots of opinions–some said they liked it, some said they liked it but later admitted they missed my long hair, and some liked it until they saw photos of me with my longer hair. I didn’t really care what they thought–my hair wasn’t for them. Women seemed to find it inspiring. Another friend told me she knew immediately we’d get along well when we first met because I also had short hair (which turned out to be true! 🙂 ).

But it wasn’t just my hair that was new. For the first time in like 18+ years I was no longer a student and didn’t really know what to do with myself now that my time wasn’t action-packed with student clubs, internships, classes, and studying. I suddenly had an abundance of free time, which I still tried to fill by doing things with the university and taking a German class–couldn’t quite let go of my student identity. But I skipped class and didn’t do homework, and reveled in the fact that for once, it didn’t matter (what a rebel). I started swimming again–something I hadn’t done since high school–and traveled and wrote.

As is the case with moving somewhere completely new, I found myself in a lot of superficial conversations, trying to meet people and make friends. “Just show up,” I repeated to myself. “Trust the process.” But it was easy to get discouraged trying to make friends when I knew I’d be leaving so soon. And sometimes, east Germany could be quite the drag. I was tired of being almost run over in grocery stores and not being able to turn to a random person next to me and start a conversation. Even though my language skills had improved, there was always this feeling of being on edge, never understanding quite as clearly what was happening and what people were saying. Germany was great, but it wasn’t home.

Admitting that I was an American in a tiny German town was a risky gamble–either making you an exciting curiosity or cuing commentary about the US and everything that’s wrong with it (pardon my French, but as an American abroad, I’ve taken a lot of sh** about the US this year! you’re welcome). “Do you miss the US?” people asked me. “Are you excited to go back?” I was unsure how to answer this question. Jein. The longer I spent in Germany, the more I realized that I was more American than I thought–whatever that meant. But did international news just not represent the America I knew and loved or did I just not know America? I had no answer.

The days got short and cold and dark. I felt uprooted. I suppose the excitement of having short hair and getting to be whoever I wanted to be threatened to be too intoxicating of an adventure. I took my bike out one day and knocked over someone else’s, but I didn’t stop to pick it up and biked away wondering sheepishly: “Is this the kind of person I am now?” As I swam laps, I’d think back to a scene in The Secret Garden, when one of the characters is wondering if other people like her and her friend responds, “Well, how do you like yourself?” Did I like Sarah-with-short-hair?

Maybe I didn’t, because I dyed my hair blond, which was definitely an act of self-care as much as it was an attempt to distance myself from whoever brown-haired-Sarah was, to try to make myself as different as I possibly could be. I felt gutsy and new.

I took a solo trip to Greece–a scary but a much needed practice of figuring out what it was I actually wanted– clearing out my throat chakra. Somehow, I realized I worried less about what other people thought. I took things less personally. I didn’t have panic attacks. I stood more firmly on my feet. I practiced yoga more regularly. And I kept swimming.

In March I learned the practice of writing a question on paper and leaving it somewhere far away from you, forgetting about it, then coming back to it later and seeing if there is an answer. An artistic practice but also a spiritual one (perhaps not mutually exclusive). I had hardly realized I had asked the question last year, but I found an answer in one of those many exhausting and repetitive get-to-know-you conversations. Someone asked me what I do for fun, and I blurted out: “I write.” It was different than my standard answers (“OH I don’t know, I read. I do yoga blah blah blah”). I’d never said “write” before; I’d never felt like writing counted when talking about hobbies or free time actives. Could I really call myself a writer? I’m calling myself that, I decided. It suddenly felt so natural.

Trees started to bloom, the days got longer, and sometime this spring, I realized that friendships had formed, and I’d be sad to leave. Last month I binge watched the Netflix show Grace & Frankie, which I loved, if only for making me think about the importance of friendship as an equal if not more important aspiration than romantic relationships and what kind of 70-year-old woman I want to be. I’m going to be 24 soon, which somehow feels frightfully older than 23 (I’m having a mild quarter-life crisis), and I wrote a 5-year plan/goals list for the first time in my life, formalizing some ideas about where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be.

I’ll be moving to Austria in the fall, which I’m cautiously optimistic about–not ecstatic like I was about moving to Germany because it’s scary living and leaving and meeting and saying goodbye when thinking about moving to a new place. But I also feel like it’s the right next step.

I can’t point to any one experience during my time abroad or any particular activity that has defined it. It’s been a year of personal growth more than a year of career growth. (Also hair growth 😛 )

At any rate, my hair is becoming brown again, and I’m considering letting it grow long. Things change; it feels like the natural thing to do. I wrote an email to a friend after looking through photos from when I was still at university, thinking the memories would make me sad, but concluded, “I’ve changed a lot. Perhaps that’s the most surprising realization of all.”