the cosmolinguist (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cosmolinguist) wrote2012-07-26 07:13 am
cosmolinguist) wrote2012-07-26 07:13 am
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Did I call that or what?
My mom greeted me at the airport with "Oh Holly you know I don't like that!" and the kind of one-armed shoulder-squeeze that might be construed as a hug but which I knew meant she wanted to throttle me.
Fifteen hours after I'd left my house in Manchester, sleep-deprived, in huge amounts of pain from my sinus infection, having repeatedly believed I wasn't going to make it, wrung out by the anxiety and the total breakdown that I'm sure made me That Crazy Woman for the gate staff at Schipol's E19, I couldn't even figure out what it was she didn't like; I looked down at my clothes -- an old, faded dress, stained with something from my airplane dinner -- in confusion until I remembered: it was my hair.
All week I've been telling people the story of how I came back for my grandma's funeral when I was in college, in the middle of finals; a friend had a shouting match with one of her professors to rearrange hers so she could drive me. We got here in the middle of the night, a four-hour drive on slow, boring roads. And my mom greeted me with a wordless scream, because I dared to have bright red spiky hair. (When all my grandma's old-lady friends told me the next day how my grandma would have loved it, and other such approving "oh you crazy kids" type stuff, I could feel my mom seething besides me, the only one who thought it was such a bad thing.)
I tried telling her it could've been a lot worse -- I washed it until the green faded out, it's just bleached now. I also briefly thought about telling her "hey, at least I shaved my legs!" but wasn't quite tired and miserable enough for that to seem like a good idea.
Fifteen hours after I'd left my house in Manchester, sleep-deprived, in huge amounts of pain from my sinus infection, having repeatedly believed I wasn't going to make it, wrung out by the anxiety and the total breakdown that I'm sure made me That Crazy Woman for the gate staff at Schipol's E19, I couldn't even figure out what it was she didn't like; I looked down at my clothes -- an old, faded dress, stained with something from my airplane dinner -- in confusion until I remembered: it was my hair.
All week I've been telling people the story of how I came back for my grandma's funeral when I was in college, in the middle of finals; a friend had a shouting match with one of her professors to rearrange hers so she could drive me. We got here in the middle of the night, a four-hour drive on slow, boring roads. And my mom greeted me with a wordless scream, because I dared to have bright red spiky hair. (When all my grandma's old-lady friends told me the next day how my grandma would have loved it, and other such approving "oh you crazy kids" type stuff, I could feel my mom seething besides me, the only one who thought it was such a bad thing.)
I tried telling her it could've been a lot worse -- I washed it until the green faded out, it's just bleached now. I also briefly thought about telling her "hey, at least I shaved my legs!" but wasn't quite tired and miserable enough for that to seem like a good idea.
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I don't know what to say to this. I'll settle for - you don't deserve to be treated like this. Remember you've got people who love you. I'm so sorry you've got to deal with this.
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Sigh. Until last weekend, my plan had been to come see you lot today. That'd have been a bit more fun, I think :)
Thank you for your kind words. It helps a lot to be reminded, when I'm immersed in this stuff, that not all my life requires me to put up with being treated in such ways.
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