Alright welcome to part two of Kate’s blonde hair disaster. Fast forward to about five years later. During my junior year I had what I like to call my pre-quarter-life crisis. I basically had a complete identity crisis where I realized I didn’t like who I was, what I was doing and how I was acting. So what better way to change all of these things than bleaching my hair…*

*Not really true. If you really want to better yourself, you can’t alter your appearance and expect yourself to be a completely different person. That takes time and effort, which of course my instant gratification mind does not usually think about.

Anyway, off I go on my spur of the moment decision to completely bleach my hair white. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t work. I talked to my friends and we made a last minute plan to dye my hair in the basement of my friend’s house one night after our CYO basketball game. So off I go to the Waldo CVS and dramatically walk to the hair aisle. Based on little to no research beforehand, I decided to grab the most platinum blonde bottle of hair dye I could find. My inner monologue thought it was one of the most drastic changes I was about to make.

“This is a scene that will most definitely be included in the made-for-TV movie about my life…. Yeah, this is gonna be good.”

In reality, I was literally just a girl standing in CVS buying hair dye, literally nothing out of the ordinary… at all.

So after our basketball game, me and my friends were in a very great mood and I marched straight to my friend’s basement, shut the door and announced that now was the time to bleach my hair. I handed the hair kit over to three of my closest friends and sat on my throne (the toilet). As I listened to my friends debate the proper way to turn my hair white, I never once thought about how fatally bad the decision I was making could be. About two hours and three showers later I blow-dried my hair and finally looked in the mirror. My jaw dropped. In my mind my hair was going to look something in between a blonde Kim Kardashian and a super punk rock chick.

In reality, I looked more like post-rehab Lindsay Lohan… or something of the sort. The majority of my hair was bright orange and parts of it were still brown. I screamed, I cried, I fainted. No that’s actually a lie, I really didn’t faint; I’m the person who tries to make the best out of bad things that happen. So I laughed it off and went on to enjoy the rest of my night. Oh, I forgot to mention, I didn’t tell my mother of my plan to do this.

The next day, I avoided encountering my parents as much as possible, but it was inevitable. My mother saw my hair and told me I had made a very bad decision. I told her I was going to fix it and not to worry, I knew a professional that could help: my 14 year old sister, Tess.

I went back to CVS, bought two more of the same hair dye kits and drove back to my house. Tess and I proceeded to spend the rest of our Sunday afternoon murdering my hair. Twice.

At the end of the process my hair looked slightly better, but still rough. After that, I decided that maybe I shouldn’t dye my own hair, so I started going to a professional salon. I recently decided that I no longer want to kill my hair so I am slowly going back to my natural color. (Even though I also really want to dye my hair silver and my current hair stylist told me it was possible without bleaching it again. I might do that after high school.)

Although it seems silly and not that big of a deal, I’m really glad that I bleached my hair. Even though I did not get the drastic change and white glamourous hair that I wanted, I still was one step closer to making myself happy. I had a really hard time last school year and I was completely lost and unaware of who I was and where I was going. The reason I wanted to bleach my hair was because I wanted to. It’s as simple as that, and even though it might have killed my hair, I don’t regret it.

This next part has nothing to do with hair dying and is more about how to live a life you are happy with….

I find it very hard for me to do things when the only reason “because I want to”. This is because of my constant need for my life to have a purpose. I have learned that in order for myself to be happy I have to do things that make me happy. Whether that is bleaching my hair with little to no thought behind it or deciding to say no to hanging out with friends when I would rather take a bath.

From the wise words of my newfound icon Jen Sincero, ask yourself these three steps when deciding whether or not you should do something.

1. Is this something I want to be, do or have?
2. Is this going to take me in the direction that I want to go?
3. Is this going to screw over anyone else in the process?

If the answer to these questions are: yes, yes, and no, respectively, then do it. Not every decision you have to make has to be extremely well thought out and planned. As teenagers, we don’t really get a lot of say or control in a lot of different aspects of our lives. So why not do things that make us happy if we get the chance?  Yes it might not drastically better our lives or even change them in the slightest but that doesn’t mean it’s stupid or a waste of time.

The moral of my story is this: if you have an idea or an opportunity to pursue something that you think you would enjoy or benefit from, do it.