My short haircut-speech

   Summer, 2007. It was hot. Not just ‘hot’, but sizzling, baking hot. And I could not tolerate it. I hated the way thick sweat clung on the back of my neck, feeling sticky and dirty. That was the reason why I decided to have a haircut. At that time, what I wanted was a ‘trim’ that would make some air passage to my neck, not a sporty-looking short hair-cut. The hairdresser asked me,

   ‘So, how would you like it to be?’

   I, at the age of eleven, did not know much about complexities of hair styles. So I simply said,

   ‘I want it short.’

   She asked me back if I wanted it to be like the one an actress had. It was the hairstyle of an actress whose name I heard quite often. She must have been famous. Therefore I said,

   ‘Sure’.

   What I was not able to grasp was the famous role she played in a drama. The drama was about the main character disguising as a man. And she was the main character. A few minutes later, I looked myself into the mirror and saw a boy. Not a boyish looking girl but a proper boy.

   Obviously, others saw me as I saw myself. Friends I hanged around with were mostly girls. Come next day, and I found a wrong depiction of myself as a person who constantly changed his girlfriend. My presence in women’s toilet filled a lot of female users with awkwardness and doubts. I kindly reassured that they were at the right place, that there was no need for such panics. For those who wanted to know more, I would add that I too, was as female as they were.

   After I got the haircut, even an image of me began to form. To my friends, I was somehow seen as a radical person. A person who would never be scared of anything. A person who would never cry. Quite on the contrary to their belief, I was a normal girl who abhorred scary movies and bugs. Whenever I had to watch horror movies, the hours were the time for mental breakdowns. However, I pretended not to care, acting to be at ease, unshaken. When girls shrieked upon seeing a big twelve-legged dark creature crawling on the classroom floor, I wanted to run away. Instead, I would behave as if everything was under control, as it was expected of me. The important thing was that in fact, I was not the person who people believed me to be. I just knew I was not. Nonetheless, I acted as if I was.

   Now that I have longer hair, the question ‘Are you a boy or a girl’ does not follow me anymore. And it was not the question itself that mattered at the time. Expectations mattered. I crunched and hid some parts of myself to fit into the mold people have formed. For what? To please them? Not to disappoint them? Or was I simply too afraid? At the age of eleven, I dared not contradict any expectations people were building up. As a result, at the end of the day, I looked into myself and found this stranger who was claiming to be myself.

   Expectations, they made me reluctant to approach for a change, be too conscious about what others may think of me. Expectations, they coloured me with fancy images which never belonged to me. Expectations. They were ties that bound me to limited, confined area. Having lost chances to cut them off myself, I had been dragged by them until I ran out of breath. When I got exhausted, I found myself under a mask. Living another person’s life, tied, afraid and fake.