Still Blue

Ever since I can remember my favorite color has been blue. It gives me a sense of calmness and peace in its beauty. Unfortunately, I had a break-in-blue-loving service due to an episode of Touched By An Angel (iykyk). The bad person/angel was shown in a blue light and I was distraught. Like why would they let my favorite color represent the antagonist like that?? Blue is a good color! My mama was trying to tell me they meant nothing by it and that they used different colors, but I wasn’t hearing it. They had blue out here repping the devil and so I had to change it up. I said bye to my favorite color since I knew my colors and went to red [eye roll]. See as a child I was always here for the “boy colors” and rarely liked the typical more “feminine” ones such as pink or yellow. And as children often do, I eventually changed my color back to blue and stuck with it – those other colors weren’t holding a candle to my beautiful blue. I never cared that people thought it to be a “boy color” or whatever they said, only that I liked it and how it continues to make me feel when I look at it. Small me really was a head strong being in certain ways…

Anyway, I recently celebrated a birthday and as it approached, I was wondering what style I was going to get my hair in. I got on Instagram like I always do to look at hairstyles that I wanted to try and finally settled on one the day before my appointment – also normal. However, when I woke up the next day I still wasn’t convinced and decided to do something to make me happy. A long time ago, maybe even when I was still in undergrad, I saw this pic on Instagram (really the best place to find a hairstyle) of this woman who had dyed her hair a midnight blue. It was just enough to see the blue when the light hit and I’ve wanted it ever since. For me to remember the name of the hair color after all this time is proof of the chokehold that had on me, so much that I can even still see the pic when I think about it. So, on the day of my appointment, I woke up with blue highlights on my mind and wasn’t backing down.

Now was I scared? Hell yeah! What if the hair change I’d wanted for so long was to turn out to be a mess in my head? I could walk out looking like the one Black Smurf. And since I’ve had my natural hair, this would be the first time I’d put chemicals in it since I transitioned (I’m still talking hair for my non Black readers). I operate a lot off of impulse though so naturally I said “fuck em, we ball” and got my blue highlights. And you know what, they are beautiful. For so long I was afraid to get them because I wondered what would people think of me. Would they call it “ghetto” or just question my motives? Then I had to think about it:

1. If someone feels bright and beautiful colors in a Black person’s head is ghetto, that’s their biased, dumb ass problem.

2. The only question that matters here is asking if I like it, to which I’d respond “oh hell yes!” in my Maya Wilkes voice.

Something I’m still working on is simply making decisions for me, and not being concerned with how others will feel or how it’ll make them look. But if head strong, baby me could pick a favorite color to stick beside for 20+ years, then the grown version can stand proudly for putting that color in her own head or with any other decision she makes in her grown ass life.

It’s still blue over here.