If you knew me, you would know that I could be a bit of a coward sometimes. Big changes terrify me, and my confidence tends to fluctuate wildly depending on how I feel. It had been years since the first time I told my friends, "I want to color my hair.", so to speak. The wish remained untouched, though every so often I would repeat it like I was working on a spell.
Well, it's not that I hadn't had the pull to actually do it. My hair was long and soft but quite regular looking and a bit dry. It might be a no-brainer decision to some people, considering I was no shampoo model, but I was afraid that the new color and the chemical content in it wouldn't suit me, while the fear of change that had blanketed my whole life didn't help either. At the end of the day, it had always been difficult to say goodbye to my virgin hair.
"You know you won't do it," one of my friends vocalized what I had myself reckoned. At that point, I had come to accept the fact that doubt had started to hold me back here and there, so I just shrugged. It was not until last week that a crack started to appear in what seemed like a perfectly good glass.
You know in the movie when the main characters are satisfied with their own life, happily doing what they are doing until a new neighbor comes to the picture with their greener grasses? Like a hard slap in the face, they realize that different things could happen if they weren't so amiable. It goes without saying that the next scene shows how they turn their life upside down trying to achieve the life they consider a better fit.
As a loyal customer of a streaming service company and a viewer of the so-called movie, we can't help but speculate the scenarios at hand: would it be better if the main characters keep their desire to themselves instead of hunting the enigma, or would the decision become once-in-a-lifetime kind of decision that shouldn't be wasted once available?
A bet shouldn't be made. Directors could mischievously mislead us in the first few scenes, making us believe that it should be like this while it should be like that. When push comes to shove and the ending is the one we couldn't seem to wrap our head around, we would wish that we didn't buy the cassette or subscription in the first place.
It was what ironically happened to me last week—though not literally. Life offered me something I couldn't say no to but should not do. It was like getting a free lemon without the proper tools to turn it into lemonade, and I was thirsty so it was quite a torture.
I'm never one to gamble, but for once in my life I badly wanted to. A list of pros and cons was like magnets that could be helpful but were only used as your refrigerator's decoration. I didn't care about it. I was blindsided by a possible image in my head, a scenario that I had directed in my favor. And it was a terrible thing to do because I knew deep down how hard it would crush me if the opposite happened.
With a big heart and a realization of how ungrateful I had been that whole time (trust me I felt so bad about it afterward), I said... no. The neighbor could have had greener grasses all they want, but that doesn't mean I should have had them too. I slowly accepted the fact that being content about my surrounding helped, like being grateful for a comfortable chair to sit on, a beautiful corner showcasing colorful book spines, and a small garden that my mom is very proud of.
I removed myself from the wicked thought and let go of the dream of leaving my hometown then. Saying goodbye to something that had been so close to being mine, however, hit differently. On account of realizing how inevitable farewells could be, I became very impulsive: what's one more goodbye to add given that I had relinquished something so big? And so I said goodbye to my virgin hair that day and dyed it natural brown.
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