Oh! The ponytail!

I know it is wrong to love something so much, especially something that has no feelings and really can't love you back....but I have always LOVED my hair. It is the best friend I've ever had. Even when I threatened its very existence with innumerable products, blow dryers, curling irons, flat irons, bleach, hair dye, razors, gallons of hairspray and worst of all....personal attempts at bang trimming, even through all this it was resillient and dare I say, beautiful. I have often felt about my hair the way Anne Shirley felt about her nose; knowing it was beautiful and occasionally feeling waves of guilt for my knowledge and enjoyment of that beauty.
I should interject at this point that these feelings for my hair developed AFTER the terrible Dorothy Hammil years of early childhood-some sort of punishment inflicted by mother, AFTER the banana clip and sheperical bangs years-some sort of punishment inflicted by society, and of course after all the terrible tries at hair-self-government that spanned the junior high and high school years of my life. In essence it has only been as an adult I have truly appreciated my tressess.
I love the way the my hair smells, I love the way it feels falling over my shoulders and down my back, and mostly I really love the way it feels when I twist it in and around my fingers. This of course being a little habit I picked up as an infant. Although, unlike sucking my little finger, I have never been able to abandon that small comforting action.
So it was an overwhelmingly difficult day when in May of this year I cut off some of my beloved hair. (And by "some of my hair" I mean 13 glorious inches.) "Why?" you may ask would you do such a crazy thing when you have just spent 2 intense paragraphs devoting yourself to said hair." Well the answer is really a simple one-in the hope of helping someone else. I donated all those time won tressess to "Locks of Love." However this is not about my donation or the amazing person that is has made me into. No this particular entry is about my selfishness. It is true that I donated my hair, but it is also true that I have missed my locks each of the 140 days, 9 hours and 14 minutes that they have been gone. (of course that time is based on the exact moment that I wrote it-please adjust for time passed from the point of writing to the point of reading.)
I have tried during each of those 140 days to accept my hair choice and to enjoy the new looks that my current cut allows....but I recently stood in a line behind a woman with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and I stared at that most enviable of hairstyles. That is the precise moment when it hit me. I thought, "Oh! The ponytail! How I miss the ponytail....I want it back..... sob..sob..sob!" It was at this point a kind bystander rushed to my defense as I collapsed to the cold hard ground beneath me. Even with the assisstance, I regret to say that I still spent the better part of 12 hours crying over my lost hair. The plain and simple truth is that I miss my hair and after many hours of therapy-which isn't free-I have been able to admit that fact and I now know that it is okay for me to feel that way....even if I secretly try to pull my hair into a sad little ponytail every night before I go to bed.