Dear, Kitty 

My students kept asking me why I dyed my hair so much. I started telling them that I hate looking the same, the way a portrait does, and that I enjoy feeling like someone else— in an artsy kinda way. Like cosplay. It was a euphemism, of course. 

It’s true, Kitty. I do like feeling like someone else, but that’s because I hate myself. I can’t bear the thought of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the same person I hated last week, blonde-haired or brunette, in the mirror. If I switch it up often, there’s a time frame in between my old hair color and my newest one that I fancy my outward appearance. The novelty of it all. Like a fresh start. (Although I’m starting to think it’s not really about my physicality as much as it is self-loathing.)

It always reverts to one single reason, but I won’t keep mentioning it. It’s very boo-hoo-me.

Red makes me feel the best, though. When I have red hair, Kitty, I think of the last stanza in “Lady Lazarus” and that makes me feel omnipotent. Grandiose. Like a literary event. It goes: 

“Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair   

And I eat men like air.“

–Sylvia Plath

People always state the obvious. You know, the way people do. They tell me I’ll fry my hair off, get alopecia, or worse suffer a dreadful chemical burn on my scalp and develop a funny-looking head shape. They’re concerned for the health of my hair more than they are for the health of my mind. They never ask themselves why I do what I do. Anywho, how am I supposed to give a damn about my hair when I hardly care about myself? 

It’s like my cousin always says, Kitty, “it be like that.”

And it is like that.

Yours Truly,

Athena V.