i've had a strange relationship with my hair during my 23 years of life and ongoing. as a child it was always in the way, and no one ever really knew what to do with it; in my teenage years, long hair made me feel ugly and wrong, and short hair just made me feel ugly; as a young adult and in my twenties i have so far been ruled by fear and avoidance of pain so overwhelmingly that i stopped even thinking of my appearance as something i have control over.

the last few months have been a period of intense destructive and restorative change, and for the first time in years i have been truly confronted with some of my deeper fears and the inescapable realization of the emptiness and vastness of the world and myself, which will only continue to get emptier unless i get myself together and fill them both with something good. and so for the first time in years, i started thinking that i want to look like myself again, whoever that myself is.

i cannot think of my hair and my transness as separate things, just as i cannot think of my transness and some unverbalized raw part of my soul as separate things. all three are in direct conversation. when i was 14 i recieved my first revelation that i am actually a boy and as a boy i deserve to cut all my hair off. it was blissful and was baby august's first taste at bodily agency. various life challenges followed and i started believing i was actually just a broken woman, and my hair remained unremarkable and short. my two first years of immigration and all on my own for the first time made me feel distinctly connected with my transness again, and as a result i freely dyed my hair and even put it in little braids. a year in waiting and my freshman year, both yearning painfully to reconnect with myself again, i tried and generally failed at making my hair look mine. and now, the last two years, the years of me progressively digging deep into the sickness spiral (which ironically only leads up), i actively tried not to think of my appearance at all. my body carried me through the day, and nothing more. any other feelings and thoughts evoked acute dread and despair. i struggled to look at myself in the mirror.

and now i'm here.

it's been so long since i've been ruled by fear that i've stopped correcting people when they call me "she" and have begun wondering if i've deluded myself into thinking i was ever trans. but something within my soul sings when i let go of the dam. let my voice drop from a customer service goodgirl to something deeper and ambiguous; let my body carry myself through space without me filtering each movement to be socially appropriate (which ends up looking not like a girl nor like a boy but something new and different).

i realized i do actually want long hair. it's embarassing how powerfully moved i am by images of trans men with long hair -- searows -- in part because i think this is the first time i've emotionally internalized the concept that trans men and girlboys can have long hair and remain trans men and girlboys. that maybe i am a trans man girlboy.

as it stands, i do not feel like anything confident and beautiful like that, but i do feel a growing light within me wishing to uncover this wound again. rattusgarden is one of the intentional steps i am taking to cultivate myself again; another step is i have decided to actually grow my hair out, and maybe even reach out to a gender care clinic in the area. (the latter part remains to be seen.)

which all of that leads us to right now. my hair has officially reached shoulder length in the recent weeks and i do not know what to do with it. besides the simplest low ponytail and unique instances of brading two little strands into my hair, i haven't done a single hairstyle on myself in the last 10 years, and i do not know what people do with their hair anymore. it's all so overwheling i just tie it all up and out of the way and hope it doesn't get too greasy. i think the reason i don't know what to do with any of this is because my hair is like my transness is like the raw unverbalized part of my soul, and i don't know what to do with my transness and i really don't know what to do with my soul. i don't think i know how to care for them. i think it's imperative to start learning.

i wish i could say i will be going into the store tomorrow to pick up some hair accessories or making a list of styles or hair care routines to try but to do that feels like i would be uncovering really sore wounds, and i am afraid and i have been afraid for the last 5 years of my life. but i think if i don't write this down it dies within me and im tired of things going into my soul to die