My Haircut

 On Friday afternoon I got a $13 haircut at Victoria Drive (past-Main/Fraser/Knight, yep it was that far), and the guy cut my hair too short. Haven't had such short hair in so long, and having short hair makes my hair & neck feel cold. Like I'm exposed & vulnerable, but that's also kinda what I am?

Watched "All the Bright Places" last nite by myself and man it hit me in the gut in so many ways. The fact that [edit: SPOILER ALERT] Finch dies, giving in /succumbing to his bipolar mental health issue while he helped Violet get better... I dropped tears, which makes me wonder if I can still cry? I usually cry at these sort of things.

Anyway the haircut & movie made me feel cold, vulnerable & exposed, which is wat I'm not used to tbh. Blame it on toxic masculinity perhaps this idea that I need to be strong, w/o emotion (except anger, anger is OK) & a leader. But wat if it's just tokenism in some way? I overcompensate, act extroverted & outgoing to hide the loneliness & isolation I feel, not being connected mentally with some people... [edit: Stanley is self-censoring himself here] ...I believe in feminism & want to be aware of my unconscious bias, and learn to understand that it's OK to not be OK.

I guess these thoughts came earlier on, when I met Chiam Ka Kit to lend him my Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) book (edit: the book is about the May 13 riots in Malaysia, and I met Kit on Tuesday). I told him I have anxiety, low self-esteem, impostor syndrome, low self-confidence, all of that "good stuff". I told him I went to see UBC counselling a few times, but not since COVID, and Kit is a mature student with a wife and kid(s) and probably didn't expect me to expose myself like this, but the fact that he listened to me with care, in a non-judgemental way, was all I could ever ask for in a friend really.

I guess covid has just heightened & exposed my introspection, my discovery of my own self further, after I've neglected/ put aside doing it so for so long. I used to write freely, read books for leisure, do poetry, all these creative & intellectually stimulating things, but I realize I've stopped coz I've just been in triage mode, putting a band-aid over a wound & ripping it off & putting a new one without letting the wound heal completely. (my situation) it's kinda like a glass cupboard with Corelle plates that are about to fall down; when you open the cupboard, a few plates will inevitably fall & break, but you can salvage the few at the back (depending on how fast yr hand is).

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/asia/stuck-plates-cupboard-puzzle-trnd/index.html (see also: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kassycho/the-viral-photo-of-bowls-trapped-in-a-cupboard-was-actually)

In a way I think that's the state that I've been in, with the glass cupboard unopened (or perhaps, now slightly open). And this post is in some way my way of opening that glass cupboard with plates. My way of learning to be comfortable with being vulnerable, being exposed, feeling cold, without my thick & long hair helping me feel warm & providing me with a sense of safety. So in that sense, I guess my haircut was necessary, tho aesthetically I still think it's too short & not worth the journey to Victoria Drive (could've gone to UBC nest & save on travel $$). But perhaps the importance lies not in the distance it took to get to the haircut place, but rather in the journey itself. And I hope me my exposing myself helps you, dear reader, as much as it has helped me as I ground myself more by putting my thoughts to paper. 

(Written by hand on the morning of April 10 at CCM aka Hon Hsing, Vancouver)