Alchemy

I once knelt in front of the mirror in my childhood bedroom, feeling like there was nothing I could control, and chopped off most of my hair.

The next week I started therapy, and my therapist made wide surprised eyes at me when she asked if I had been doing anything impulsive and I pointed to the top of my head. Over the next few months I started to dye it - first platinum, then dark brown, then golden blonde. Any time I felt restless.In the Minnesota winter, during the lead-up to Founders' Day, I took a deep breath and dyed it bright, bright red. I loved being a redhead, and stayed one until this October. I haven't chopped at it or dyed it since then, although the itch to do so is getting bad. The truth of the matter is that right now I can't afford hair dye or a haircut. And for once, I don't trust myself to give a decent haircut.

I get these urges, when I am feeling fragmented, to change into a self that I can physically separate from all the dark wild things inside. I dye my hair as red as it can go and I bake cakes that will go uneaten and I maybe sometimes scrounge up old old nailpolish to put on, and I wear bright colors and walk with swift purpose through the world. Barb once nodded wisely about this and called it alchemy - alchemy. Told me that alchemy was a natural and healthy way to outsource stress, fear, uncertainty, panic. Now, when I am impulsive, I take a small step back and try to find the alchemy in what I am doing. If I find it, I run right along with the knowledge that I am not ruining, but mixing, building. If I don't find it? In theory, I stop what I'm doing. In practice, I don't stop, scatter further.