Sixteen years ago -- I bleached my hair blonde. 

Not because I liked being blonde.
Definitely not because I looked better as a blonde.

I bleached my hair because I had gradually come to accept that brunette wasn’t good enough. 

In a thousand small ways I’d been informed over and over again that he had a fetish for blondes. His high school girlfriend had looooong snowy blonde hair. There was that early college vacation photo on the wall in his dorm room, grinning as he posed with Marilyn Monroe’s star in Hollywood. 

Every girlfriend before me had been blonde. He preferred blondes, and my hair was dark as night.

I couldn’t have explained, back then, why our relationship felt off balance much of the time…

• Why the atmosphere was so topsy-turvy…

• Why I walked on eggshells for years…

• Why, after my whole life sleeping like a rock, I now suffered chronic insomnia…

• Why I'd spent my married years battling unexplained autoimmune issues, recurring infections, anaphylactic reactions…

I couldn’t have articulated the link connecting complex trauma from living in an emotional war zone with my growing list of mysteriously senseless health issues no doctor could figure out. 

I just knew we hadn’t ever really been okay.
I knew he “struggled” with "addictions."
I knew he wanted other women.
I knew he had explicit sexual fantasies about my attractive girlfriends.

I knew these things, because he told me to my face. 

But I didn’t have the words for it yet. 
I’d never heard of gaslighting, psychological abuse, intimate terrorism, betrayal trauma…
I didn’t know there were actual terms for my day to day reality. So the problem had to be with me, right? 

I just knew I wasn’t enough.

Not beautiful enough to keep him faithful.
Not vapid enough to avoid intimidating him.
Not submissive enough to let him do all my thinking for me.
Not creative enough.
Not average enough.
Not goofy, or spontaneous, or fun enough. 

And certainly not blonde enough. 
So I decided to bleach my hair. 

Maybe that would make me enough?

Maybe that would keep his attention.
Maybe then I could compete with the women on the screen that absorbed his focus and satisfied his longings. 

I did it while he was gone on a trip. 

I didn’t realize how hard it was to turn black hair blonde. 
Or that it might go orange instead. 
Or that I needed to bleach it multiple times. 

I learned quickly. 

By the time it was done, my scalp oozed with a hundred open blisters from repeated exposure to the harsh chemicals. 

It burned.
It itched.
It would be worth it. 

I would be his ideal woman now. 

The night he was coming home, I planned how to surprise him. I hot-rolled my newly platinum tresses, put on a pretty dress, and donned an apron. When he drove up, I was standing at the sink and dinner was ready. 

I looked like a Stepford Wife.
A domestic doll. 

He walked in, took one glance and shouted…
“I HATE IT!”
…then turned on his heel and walked back outside. 

I was crushed. 

My scalp thudded in the burning open sores as blood rushed to my face. Bursting into sobs, I ran to the bedroom. 

I blistered my head for you, I hiccuped to myself as the tears dripped off my chin.  

L: in my mid-20s before children, living in constant confusion and betrayal 
R: more than 10 years later as an exhausted single mama in my late 30s, but healing and safe

Nothing was good enough.
The problem was clearly me, after all.
Not even transforming myself into his perfect ideal would make him kind.

The women on his computer screen win again. 

Crack by crack, my heart shattered over the years until I grew used to living in pieces. 

Dead inside.
Rejected.
Numb. 

You’d never have guessed the truth, if you saw me at church. 

Not unless you looked closely at how my smile didn’t reach all the way to my eyes.
Not unless you listened for the traces of cynicism lacing my words.
Not unless you took notice that I always, always looked as close to perfect as possible.
Not unless you already knew that when a woman works this hard at perfection, she's trapped in a life where human flaws are not acceptable. 

But if you just glanced at me on the surface, you wouldn’t have known. 

You’d have seen me smile.
You’d have watched me hug my babies.
You’d have wondered how I always managed to stay so very busy. 

Years later, at the very end, a counselor asked him how he thought I felt — now that I’d learned the facts about his real-life forays as a consumer of the sex trade. 

He replied glibly that of course I must feel like I wasn’t valuable as a woman. 
Something welled up inside me, as I realized that his conclusion was no longer accurate at all. 

The counselor asked me what I thought of his perspective. 

“It's not true!” I sat straighter in my seat.
“I am enough — just not enough for YOU! I am pretty — just not attractive to YOU! Because you have chosen to fill your mind with sludge and feast on the filth of exploitation and assault as self-gratification. It's because you aren't satisfied with what you have.”

He looked shocked.
I didn’t usually speak to him boldly like that. 

“I spent more than a decade chasing your ideal, trying to turn every aspect of myself into the mythical woman you seemed to want, but in reality — you were never going to be faithful or true. The problem is not that I’m not good enough… it’s that you don’t want what you already had.”

I shrank back into my chair.
I wasn’t sure what to say next.

I cringed, watching his face turn stony blank while his jaw muscles flexed in rage. The counselor just kept talking like it was no big deal, and I knew...
There would be hell to pay for my moment of honesty. 

But I was done.

Done being erased.
Done trying to pretend.
Done covering up lies to keep peace. 
Done volunteering myself and my children as sacrificial lambs on his altar of ego.

I was done. 

And I knew one other thing for sure….

I would never, ever bleach my hair again.

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