regret and insecurities

this post might be slightly grim, so i am apologizing in advance.

 

recently, a rather tragic event has happened to my family.  some of you reading this already know about it, but for those who don’t, i am going to try to give you a rundown of what happened so you can be up to speed for the rest of this blog post.  admittedly, this happened as a result of a decision i made, but i ask that you consider the outside circumstances of what my life looked like at the time before making any judgments.

this is something that i saw coming, and very well could have prevented, but i decided to let life play out and take the next things as they came.

i have included a photo that better shows what we were facing several weeks ago, so if seeing a photo of this type of subject matter is too much to handle, i would advise using discretion.

the photo is pretty self-explanatory, but i’ll offer additional thoughts after you see it.

 

here it is:

i am sorry to have put you through this, as i know that looking at me with cornrows has now caused you lasting damage.  you wouldn’t be the only ones, though.  along with you are the strangers at the grocery store, cowering in fear as they shoot their side-eyes, the facebook commenters who i can only imagine were trembling behind their computer screens at the horror of seeing this picture pop up on their news feeds, and everyone else who’s life apparently depends on how i wear my hair.  one person even told me that getting cornrows was a “stupid decision,” i guess because that decision somehow affected them in a negative way.  or maybe the idea of somebody wearing a hairstyle that they deemed dumb based on their perception of what dumb hairstyles are was too much to deal with.  THEY COULDN’T.  EVEN.  (interesting, isn’t it?  i always thought stupid decisions were ones that aren’t easily changed.)  i guess i owe an apology to my family for my being so willing to besmirch our good name.  they should never have to deal with people giving me funny looks.  it’s just too much.

 

you know what drove me to make this awful decision?  it was the fact that i don’t want to live a life of regret.

 

the older i get, the more i am realizing how my decision 5 years ago to stop the pursuit of becoming a professional dancer brought forth more change than pain.  growing up, one of the biggest problems i had was worrying about what people think of me.  i still don’t know if that was brought about from being a ballet boy, or if it is something that intrinsically exists within me.  i can remember my dad always telling me “you don’t need to worry about what other people think” or “it doesn’t matter what they think of xyz,” and my decision to abandon that which i thought was my life’s calling was the beginning of the end of that worry in my life.  yes, at 24 years old, i finally started figuring it out.

that was around the same time i started figuring out how insecure i actually was, about a lot of things.  i had spent the past 6 years standing in front of a mirror in tights for 6 hrs a day almost everyday until the day i quit.  that is a sure fire way to become insecure.  and i was insecure about my abilities as a dancer.  and about what people would think if i stopped dancing, and what they would think if i didn’t, or what they would think if i moved, or didn’t have another career to jump into, or that i was “wasting” my gift, and on and on and onnnnn.  so when i finally wised up and decided to make a bold life change i realized that IT DOESN’T MATTER.  i let go of all these dumb insecurities that have no power over my life and started allowing myself to find pleasure in things i love.  i allowed myself to be the inner dork i always knew i was: the one who loves classical music, a cappella choral music, making pottery (which i really miss doing, btw), fashion, hair, creating, running, knitting, project runway, lifting weights, giraffes, hgtv, wine, america’s next top model, food, roller coasters, gymnastics, the ocean, decorating, deep conversation, nights in, shoes, singing, and whatever the heck else i wanna like because, once again, IT DOESN’T MATTER.  the only thing that being insecure about who i am leads me to is regret.  and since i have no room for regret in my life, i also have no room for insecurity.

 

so yes, i got cornrows.  whoop-de-freaking-do.

 

and guess what?  i once had a beiber haircut.  granted, this was before anyone knew who he was, so maybe HE actually had a BATTLES haircut.  boom.

 

then i had my lovely wife make some of it green and blue.  THE HORROR.

 

then i had a mohawk with bomb racing stripes.

then i buzzed it.

then it grew out again.

then i bleached it.  GASP.

then i buzzed it again.

then it grew out some.

then i grew it out again.

then i cut it short.

then i bleached it.  AGAIN.  I KNOW.  YOU CAN’T.

then i buzzed it.

then i spent a year and a half growing it to this.

then i got it cut again.

side note: too many of y’all commented about how this hair cut was “so much better!”  uh.  thanks.  didn’t know i needed so much improvement.  howev, i’m glad that it no longer causes you distress to look at me.  i had long hair.  what a tragedy.

that’s 10 things that i won’t have to have regret about later in life.  11 if you count the cornrows.  and honestly, it woulda been dumb if i let any insecurities about what people might think of my hairstyle stop me from changing it.  seriously, what a failure that would’ve been.

so, no more.  no more insecurities about the things that are inside of me.  no more insecurities about the things i love or like.  no more insecurities about the things that make me “me.”  once again, insecurities lead straight to regret, and neither are worth giving power to anyone else because of their perceptions of me, whether i’ve preconceived them or not.

and no more for you, too!

 

btw, i have a pair of white jeans, in case you were wondering.  ERMAHGERD!