There is nothing quite like a bad hair day.  You never want to HAVE to wear your hair up, right? I mean it’s one thing when your hair looks bad because of weather or how it dried or a new product that isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s way worse when the culprit is your hairdresser.

We’ve all had those bad haircuts.  I remember when I was living in Boston and I had found the greatest hair stylist my freshman year of college (didn’t make sense to maintain my hair on every visit home).  Well unfortunately, this wonderful hair stylist left the salon I had been seeing him at and was only available for appointments every other Saturday. Being lazy at the time and not wanting to book a haircut months in advance, I decided I trusted his old salon to put me with someone who would be similar to him.

You know that feeling when you get a haircut you’re unsure of and at first you think, “Well maybe it’s just how it was blown out and styled, maybe when I style it myself it will be okay.”  And then you go to pay, and learn that the haircut is $20 more than you expected, which seemed pretty steep to me as a college student.  Not only did this horrible salon not pair me with someone who cut like my old stylist, they also paired me with someone who cost a lot more money than I was used to paying.  As any normal teenage girl would do, I called my mom, crying.  She comforted me with a terrible haircut story she once went through in New York City where she paid much more than I did and ended up miserable as well.

As my dad would say, “It’s just hair, it grows back.” It’s true, but it also SUCKS having to walk around feeling ugly for two months until your next haircut.

Then there’s the breaking up with a stylist.  When someone burns you once, you might not go back if it was that bad (like I did in Boston and my mom did in NY).  When someone you’ve been going to for years does something terrible, you think, “Okay, I’ll give it one more try, maybe it just wasn’t the right style for her or him to try.”  So you go back, and it happens again.

Forgiveness only gets you so far. You know you can’t possibly go back to someone who has made you feel physically deformed for months at a time, twice.  The search begins, for someone new to trust, which feels impossible after being betrayed. Do I start with a stylist, then see if she/he is good with color too? Do I let the stylist cut my hair and find a separate colorist?

I don’t think of myself as ‘flawless,’ trust me. But even if all my friends swear my hair looks good, I’m the one who has to be happy with the way I look.