Hair Ties

Let me tell you what I found this morning, seven hair ties on my left wrist and one on my right. My left wrist is lined with a hot pink almost rubber like tie, two black ones fresh out of the box, three brown ones closer to my hair color, and one rubber band that technically counts as a hair tie. My right hand has a single decorative blue one at times accompanied by a dirty gold beaded one. There are three on my bedside table for my occasional want for a braid or two with the third being a backup. There's one in my shower caddy dried and crusted from a left over hair mask. Who knows how many there are in my backpack or lost in the washing machine. My evidence of I’m not sure what.

I’m practically drowning in hair ties. I am a hair tie hoarder. I’m a gnome sitting on my box of hair ties. 

This morning I counted as many as I could, the amount totaled to forty seven. I would account for thirty two lost in the washer, seventy eight given to friends or enemies, and one to my dog, that one was an accident though. Along the way I’ve borrowed hair ties each with their own scent derived from a new shampoo, conditioner, hair oil, hair spray, even perfume. The question I ponder whenever I’m in the shower looking at my bare wrists is: where have my hair ties gone and why do I keep getting more?

There is this thing in physics, a concept I still don’t quite understand myself, called entropy. According to Google, entropy is a concept that represents disorder, randomness, or the amount of energy in a system that is unavailable to do work. Everything falls apart. It’s a totally isolated system that can only increase or remain constant but never decrease. Hair ties obey a special law of entropy. They don’t just disappear, they alter. One moment I’m grabbing a hair tie out of the twelve to choose from but once I put my hair up I can only feel three of them. I hadn’t taken any off had I? At least I think I would have remembered I did, right? 

But you wouldn’t. That’s the thing. 

I lost four hair ties yesterday between the time I left my dorm and the time I got back. I know this because I counted. I always seem to be counting now, it’s become my compulsion. Three hair ties vanished. Maybe they broke or fell off or did someone take them? Did they simply decide, with whatever consciousness these elastic bands possess, that they’ve had enough of me? My head would probably fall off if it wasn’t attached with ligaments, muscles, and that ball and socket joint. I think my hair ties want to leave me. They want to leave me and leave a lesson about attachment or holding on or the impossible reality of keeping people around for forever. Very Buddhist, very Siddhartha. 

Sightings of a Hair Tie

I scream. My mom rips another mini plastic hair tie while trying to practice her french braid. I’m convinced the nun waiting for me outside my catholic school is judging me on the two long braids. I can feel her eyes lingering as she traces the braids down my back.  She doesn’t even see the red marks on the back of my neck from the fight back of the hair ties, she can’t help but stare at the bump on my right braid. The imperfection just above the elastic holding me together, tightly.  

–

My mother screams. I’m sitting in the powder room, kitchen scissors in one hand while holding a chunk of hair in my other. Nine year-old me just began to comprehend the social norms surrounding beauty standards. My uneven Dora looking ragged cut shone a spotlight on me I couldn’t bear to have. That was until my mom got me in with her hair stylist for what she called an emergency. 

–

I tried to grow my hair out. I wanted to look like the girls in the American Girl Doll magazines. The ones with the perfect curled hair and coordinated outfits. The Ruthie Smithens doll was released in 2008, my birth year. She had dark brown hair with a purple floral dress, light blue socks, black flats, and a purple hair tie. I wanted to look just like her. The coordination book that comes with the purchase of the doll illustrated Ruthie's effortless messy updo. One that didn’t need a hair tie just to define the laws of gravity. The doll was retired in 2014 along with the rest of her accessories. 

–

Finally my hair was long enough to be put in a bun. This was the era of vsco girls, messy buns and huge hydroflasks taking up an unnecessary amount of space on my desk. I had bought five different scrunchies with my spare change. Five pastel colored scrunchies. A scrunchie is much different than a hair tie, it has a flair fabric surrounding it which makes it stand out no matter how many times you tie it trying to hide it. It’s hard to yearn for a hair style. The perfect messy bun. 

–

I swallowed my insecure, ashamed feeling. I can wear slick back pony tails without worrying about the hair tie breaking because of late nights full of trial and error. The perfect amount of gel matched with a double hair tie. The bumps in my hair combed over by a thick bristle brush. I keep 2 hair ties on my left wrist just in case, though I never need them. They leave marks on my skin, branching red indents. One, two reminders of my consciousness. 

–

I once talked to a boy who was “claimed.” His patchy bleached buzz cut stood stark against his all black outfit. I will admit, he was really cute and that’s why I did talk to him. He wore one single black hair tie on his wrist. I wondered if he was the only boy in a family of sisters or if he found it on the sidewalk. Claimed, is what he was. I was convinced he was flirting with me, turns out he was just being nice. Later that week I got a very long, threatening instagram DM about backing off of her territory so I did. 

– <> –

“Can I borrow a hair tie?” is one of the most common phrases among teenage girls, coming from a teenage girl. The sociology of borrowing hair ties is unknown. Some may characterize it under the social construct named Girl Code but it’s more of a hollow hello. Can I borrow a hair tie seems like an entrusting phrase. Can I borrow a hair tie means we both have hair in our faces, stuck in our lip gloss, accidently in our mouth. It means I forgot mine. I lost mine. Mine broke. It means I’m human. Imperfect. Please Help Me. 

The issue is no one ever returns borrowed hair ties. This is the social construct. This is what's understood. To ask for a hair tie back would be to ask for a used tissue back. It’s a violation of the natural state. It is just/fair to borrow a hair tie by the contract outlined by Tacit Consent. I never truly agreed to this yet I use its resources so therefore I consent to the laws outlined by the contract. So to answer the question “Yes, you can have my hair tie.”

I’ve given out enough hair ties to circle the earth, probably. Well, I’ll never truly know  but it feels as such. And yet I never run out. The higher being of hair ties always provides. They must breed in my backpack or in their tank in my bathroom because somehow the more I give away the more I have. It’s the Miracle of Loaves and Fishes. “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you.”

I don’t know why but I am selfish when it comes to my hair ties. I’ve never needed more than one hair tie, but giving them away hurts me. Sometimes I’ll use two for security but never for necessity. So why seven? Why do I continue to cut off the circulation in my carpals? Hair ties are small, mundane creatures. Hair ties are the kind of thing you don’t think about until you need one and then you think about nothing else. Look at your mothers bathroom drawer. Filled with bobby pins and hair ties older than you are. Circles with dead hair ripped out of the follicle. Look at the way she digs through the drawer, rummaging around the drawer for one in the sea of hair ties. Some might say she's decisive, but I say she’s picky with the one she wants. She wants the one with a small bleach stain, any other would be insulting to wear. Selfish, yes. 

The hair tie’s job is to stretch and grip and hold and fight. To hold my hair just tight enough. It's not even careful enough to try and not rip my hair out. It’s ruthless. Every use kills it a little more. How many more times can I wrap it around my head of hair? 

Once. 

Twice.

Three times.

Four.

Five. 

Six if your hair is dead and thin.

To keep things together just enough for it to breathe. 

This is also the job of mothers, relationships, skinny jeans, the skin around your knuckles, the walls of your heart, or any good metaphor really. How long till it snaps? How much wear? How many tears? How many more times will it use the sorry excuse of breaking under pressure?

She cut her hair.

My mother has had short hair for the majority of her life. Through her time living at home with her traditional Catholic mother, she didn’t dare to touch it. Back then, she possessed this shoulder length frizzy more than curly brown hair that waved around taking more space than she did. I will admit her hair was incredible. I can picture her walking into rooms with her huge hair being the canter of attention, talking even before she had the chance to. 

She decided to leave home two years after high school in pursuit of some sort of purpose. Her mother, my grandmother, hoped that would land in the travel business but instead she found a pair of scissors. Staying in hostels with limited access to a hot shower conflicted with this high maintenance hair so she chopped it. In indigenous culture a person's hair is an extension of their spirit. It represents strength, wisdom, but most importantly their identity. To my mother, her hair was just another thing holding her back. 

Through Greece and later Spain, she rocked a salt and pepper buzz leaving only one inch of hair standing. She started the trip with five hair ties, careful at every moment not to lose one. She ended the trip with the same five hair ties but a piece of her identity was left in this foreign place. Or maybe it wasn’t left behind at all. Maybe it was wrapped around those punny little elastic bands on her wrist, pressed into her pale skin. 

The earliest memories I have of my mother were far after she stopped backpacking the world. Her free spirit may have settled quite a bit but her hair stayed short. Other mothers stared at mine when she came to pick me up from school, their eyes lingering too long. At one point my classmate had asked me if I had two dads to which I had to clarify that women can have short hair too. Yes women can have short hair too. Her mother thought it was a phase. It never was a phase. 

Many say hair holds memories, each strand a new experience or emotion. And maybe that's true. Maybe hair does hold memories because it’s chained to the person it belongs to, growing from them, moving with them. Hair might remember but the hair tie keeps. It gathers them, keeps them close, holds onto memories that you don’t even need anymore. The pain inflicted when a hair tie rips out a few pieces of hair isn’t annoying; it's a reminder of the memories one is slowly letting go off. Each carefully examined strand, one end a hair follicle the other a remembrance of a dying memory. All good things come to an end, a hair tie knows that best.

I once gave my last hair tie away. 

The sun had just gone to bed for the night when I wandered into the women's restroom. I could hear kids running off of roller coasters that would later make them sick. I could smell old oil being used to fry funnel cake and the salty hints of the Jersey Shore in the air. I was trying to untangle my hair from the knotted low bun it was in when she came up to me.

“Do you have a hair tie?”

There was a small figure from where the voice came from. I nodded my head softly, pairing it with a smile. I could feel the rush of blood through my hand as I slid the beige hair tie off my wrist. I don’t know why I had a hair tie that stood out like a sore thumb against my dark hair. It matched her hair though. She took the hair tie from me and made an attempt to braid her hair. She turned to me with frustration in her eyes and I silently agreed. I ran my hands through her hair, that brittle, coarse blonde hair. By splitting the hair into three sections her scalp stood there exposed. Rough, discolored, fish net like. I tied the hair four times at the bottom. No split ends. 

“Thank You”

I turned back to the sink in front of me debating to wash my hand. My hands are covered in a waxy film, like the kind sprayed on apples to make them shiny. It’s not necessary that I wash the but I wash them anyway. My hair had somehow become looser after braiding hers. The hair tie listens to me, falling right into my hand. Our reflection in the mirror is conjoined. The long mirror isn’t cut. We can’t help but exchange a few more glances. There’s no one in the bathroom with us, just her and I. She fusses with the hair a little pulling out strands around her temples. I do the same with my hair. I’m not quite satisfied with how my hair looks but I’m close to settling. I’m too focused on the reflection staring right back at me to fully turn my eyes but I manage to catch a glimpse of her through the corner of my eye. 

A single tear strings down her face. 

She rips her hair off of her head. 

My gaze now locked on the luscious blonde hair sitting in the shared sink. The blonde hair that wasn’t hers but was hers. The hair she needed and didn’t. The hair that cost everything and meant nothing. 

She didn’t even need the hair tie. But she needed me to think she did. She needed to create the illusion that we were the same kind of girl sharing the same reflection needing the same kind of things. 

And I gave it to her anyway. My last one. The beige one that didn’t match me but it matched her. It matched the idea of her at least. The one she was trying too hard to not let melt away. 

See this is what hair ties do. They try to hold together things that want to fall apart so badly. Things that need to fall apart then they can be held together. Things that will fall apart eventually no matter how tight we tie them.