It had been two months since my last visit to a hair salon, which in curly-hair time is roughly equivalent to neglect.
I had reasons, of course. Work. Life. Scheduling. The usual adult excuses. And to make matters worse, my preferred stylist had become so hard to book — I was beginning to suspect he was either overbooked or secretly cutting hair for diplomats.
So one fine Sunday afternoon, armed with mild frustration and a mirror that had started telling the truth too loudly, I walked into the first salon with an available slot.
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Then I said the kind of sentence women usually say right before an identity shift:
“I want a pixie cut.”
It was my first time in that salon.
At that point, I no longer cared who the stylist was, how old he was, or whether anyone I knew could vouch for him. I just knew I was tired of managing a head full of hair that had long stopped cooperating with the woman carrying it.
Sixty minutes later, after a great deal of chopping, shaping, lifting, fluffing, and what I can only describe as diplomatic intervention, my hair had finally become… something that could reasonably be called a hairstyle.
And that was when it happened.
The stylist looked at me with the kind of honesty only hair professionals and close friends can afford, then said, with his assistant nodding in agreement:
“Gwapa man imong kulot, Ma’am. Ang problema lang kay bisan asa iyang direction.”
Your curls are pretty, Ma’am. The problem is, they go in every direction.
I laughed, of course.
But only because I was not emotionally prepared for a haircut to turn into a personality assessment.
Because if I’m being honest, it did not sound like they were talking about my hair alone.
At some point during that appointment, I realized that my hair and I had been overdue for a meeting.
A real one.
Not the kind where you pretend everything is fine while secretly avoiding the root problem. A proper sit-down with agenda points. Action items. Possibly even minutes, if we were being serious about it.
And clearly, this was not a conflict we could resolve on our own.
We needed a third party.
Enter: the hairstylist, who did not sign up for this level of responsibility.
There he was, unexpectedly cast as a mediator in a long-running dispute between structure and rebellion. Between grooming and surrender. Between what I wanted my hair to do and what it had apparently decided to become.
And the truth is, that arrangement felt strangely familiar.
Because if there is one thing adulthood does exceptionally well, it is this: it teaches us how to look managed without ever quite being aligned.
You show up. You function. You answer emails. You attend meetings. You remember birthdays. You meet deadlines. You keep things moving.
From the outside, everything appears under control. Grace under pressure.
But internally?
Bisan asa ang direction.
Thoughts going north, emotions heading south, energy somewhere near the parking lot.
And still, we call that “doing fine.”
Sometimes, we even call it maturity.
Perhaps that is why the haircut hit me harder than expected.
Not because it was short. Not because it was bold. But because it quietly revealed something I had been too busy to admit: I had spent so much time keeping things presentable that I had not noticed how many parts of me had already gone in different directions.
Not wild, exactly.
Not chaotic.
Just… unaligned.
And maybe that is what middle age really is. Not becoming perfectly composed, but becoming more honest about the fact that some things in us will never fall neatly into place.
Some of us were simply not built for sleek obedience.
Some of us were made with texture. Volume. Resistance. Opinions.
And that is not dysfunction.
That is design.
So yes, I left the salon lighter, shorter, and considerably more self-aware than I had intended.
My hair and I finally had our meeting.
A third party was present.
Certain truths were acknowledged.
And while we have not solved everything, I would say we are now… in a better place.
Managed, yes.
But not exactly straightened.
