Manic Pixie Dream Girl

I stood in front of the mirror after blow drying my hair today and suddenly decided to cut it. With scissors. So I took a hank in hand and began slicing through the almost black strands until the thick lock came away. The wisps left falling into my eyes, dark and shiny. I looked up through them, into the mirror, still grasping the thick ponytail in my left hand and wondered at what I'd done.

I walked out to show Bingley, hank in hand, scissors in other while he looked at me confusedly. "Did you cut your hair?" was the answer to my lifted eyebrow, followed by "You look 12, maybe 13". And I kind of do. Fringe falling into my eyes, dark and smooth and shiny and hair longer than it has been in years, curling down my back.

I'm not sure exactly what possessed me. It wasn't a bubbling idea in the background that came forth, it was an eyes in the mirror decision, to change something. Be someone different for a while. Do something ridiculous. I had spent the morning cleaning the kitchen, and then paying bills and organising salary sacrificing paperwork when something inside me snapped. Needed release, as I calmly sharpened my scissors before setting about to hack away at the most visible feature I've ever had.

When the shock had worn off, and the humour and delicious impish delight at having done something so reckless kicked in, I took a mandatory selfie and sent it to a friend, giggling as I did so, because the ridiculousness had set in. And the response from her, and later facebook friends was that I had somehow managed to cut my hair into the style of Zooey Deschanel, one of the original manic pixie dream girls.

I was never really that girl. I didn't have the chance. I've been a grown up since the day I became a mother at 22 and I think, sometimes, that shes' still in there trying to get out - not satisfied with sensibility and Mom jeans.

Over the last few days, many of my friends have been posting old pictures on facebook. Highschool and college photos of shiny happy people in the prime of their lives. And the comment from so many, as they looked at pictures of their past selves, was that they wished they could look like that again, be as free as that again. But when I look at the unsure girl of then, and the way she dressed and how self conscious she was, always, I don't want to be her again.

I want to be the girl who buys a ludicrously short dress because of the ruffles and the way the fabric feels on her skin. Who buys a belt of bells to give it shape and wears it barefoot. I want to be the girl that buys an acid green shirt dress, and wears it to work with patent nude pumps and a tied leather belt. I want to be the girl who wears a suit with a pencil skirt and a purple top tucked into the waistband with very high courts. I want to be the girl who wears shoes with buckles and deadly sharp points, that clack across tiles.

But most of all I want to be the girl who wears those things and isn't self conscious. Who not only cuts her hair into thick bangs that can't just be washed out and hidden away, but puts in a sparkly head band and grows long lost dimples in her cheeks at the very thought of them. Who demands to have her photo taken instead of hiding behind her friends. I want to be me.