Last night, someone made the comment that dyeing my white hair would be no different than when I dyed it all those colors back in my early years. And she was correct.

My mother dyed my hair the first time. Bottle of SunIn in hand, she sat me down on the picnic table behind our house and sprayed long streaks down the length of my hair, then instructed me to sit in the sun until my hair dried.

As a child, all I ever wanted to wear was cutoff blue jeans and T-shirts. It wasn’t because I hated the frills or the pretties; I was terrified of tarnishing or ruining such beautiful things. I think, even then, I didn’t feel deserving. Wearing dresses meant altering who I was out of fear. I couldn’t run without showing my panties. I couldn’t shake my hair in the wind without worrying my ribbons would come loose and fly away. Around me, little girls in dresses seemed to have a grace I did not which prevented them from destroying carefully constructed, beautiful things.

It was so easy to slide my feet into combat boots and ripped up fishnets when I was thirteen. Embraced by kids who took sandpaper to the elbows of their new leather jackets, who took pocketknives to the knees of their new jeans, who immediately went outside in their new Chuck’s and scuffed the toes, I found comfort in all things worn and used; my outside reflected what I felt inside.

My first Mohawk was shaven in a roach-infested house on Harriet Street. Chris ran the clippers down the side of my head and at my feet, atop empty cigarette packs and broken cassette cases and burned dirty carpet, lay long red locks. I dyed the Mohawk flat black with a two dollar can of spray paint. Once I had given up on pretty clothes and shiny shoes, I felt had nothing left to shed besides the hair on my head.

I was sixteen when I realized I still had one beautiful thing left that needed to be expelled. He was twenty-three, had his own personal table in the mall food court, rode a blue crotch rocket motorcycle, and modeled for a local agency.

Everyone says your first time should be special because you will always remember it. I played sick so I could stay home from school. He parked on the other side of the apartment complex and sneaked up the stairs. He never looked at the books on my shelves or the posters on my wall. He never kissed me. I can’t recall if he even looked in my eyes. Everyone says your first time should be special because you will always remember it.

There is comfort in what is worn. There is no fear of the first stain or the first tear. When something is borrowed and returned, you are less likely to notice small damages that might have been inflicted.

Correct. Dyeing my white hair would be no different from all the other times I dyed my hair in my youth. I would be hiding. I would be afraid. I would killing the beauty I have inside, what is me, what I was, what I have learned.

My mother-in-law makes comments about my physical appearance most every time we are together. Knowing her personality, she isn’t doing this to be cruel or to make me feel badly about myself. I really think she believes she is mothering me, as my own mother hasn’t been in my life for several years.

“You know you are going to have to cut your hair at some point.”

“Why?”

“Because it bothers me.”

“I don’t know why it should bother you.”

“You just do these things to spite me: the long hair, the leather jacket, refusing to wear makeup. Do you know how beautiful you would be if you wore makeup?”

I know she would do anything for me, as she sees me as her own child. I think she knows that I am strong enough to take what she says without getting my feelings hurt or doubting her love, yet I still wish for a day when she will look at me and tell me she sees a beautiful person.

My few friends have grown to accept me as I am, even if they do not understand me. I think what bothers my mother-in-law and the majority of the general populace  is that they cannot accept me if they do not understand me, and the only way to understand me is to recognize themselves in me.That is why I write what I do. Although not everyone can relate to the situations, I believe the same emotional undercurrent runs through all of us.

I have a girlfriend who lives several hundred miles away. We sometimes speak on the phone in the afternoon and during those brief moments, I feel completely accepted as I am. She doesn’t need to see me to know me.

After those conversations, I’m left wondering if my mother-in-law is correct. Must I change what I look like in order for people around me to see me, or is it worthwhile to continue to seek out people who are as blind as I when it comes to friendship?

Even though I doubt myself at times, I understand that at thirty-three, I’ve spent over two-thirds of my life trying to please other people. My goal is to shrink that fraction as I age instead of allowing it to grow.

Being an insecure attractive woman, I lived as though my looks were what was important. My appearance made it easier for people to approach me. People like to be around attractive people. Gaining too much weight, losing too much weight, stretch marks on my belly after pregnancy…these were all concerns that left me depressed and wrapped in feelings of worthlessness. Being without my looks meant I had to depend on my personality to attract others, and I never felt like I had a personality others wanted to know.

After the second baby was born, I spent many many nights walking him up and down the road in the stroller, just trying to find peace for the two of us. For the first time in years, I could think without clutter. No television or conversations between others; just the baby and I walking down the road. It was on one of those walks that I remembered a childhood dream in which I was an old lady living in the woods, long white hair like my father’s, herbs hanging from the ceiling, critters running in and out the door. Sometimes I became a heroine or an ear to listen or a healer to those who passed by, and other times I spent alone with my books and plants. It was my way of escaping from a home where I was not accepted or understood.

I had that dream again last night, brought on by the sudden growth of white hairs I see every time I pass by the mirror and recent feelings of being unaccepted. But in this dream, I was not alone. Hanging herbs brushed across the heads of friends as they gathered in my kitchen. Books were opened and read and discussed. My husband drew drinks from his still. My children ran through the woods, ducking under wild limbs. And I stood in the middle of them all, white hair tickling my waist, barefoot, a smile on my face.

I thought the older I became the less I would question life and relationships. I thought friendship meant understanding. I thought wisdom was answers. I thought life settled and relationships were quilts pieced together and passed on.

But now I see that wisdom is the desire to question life, and the acceptance of the personal growth in our friends as much as in ourselves.

I might be white-headed next year or five years from now or maybe will only carry a few sprouts my entire life, but I’m determined to live as that woman in my dream, surrounded by friends and family and hobbies and nature, barefoot and sure of herself, living wisdom.

So I had to show him the new grays last week, and call him on the phone at work when I found another yesterday.

Over the past three or four years, I’ve tried to come to terms with myself. I’ve heard people say they’ve tried to come to terms with their past, their past behaviors, things that have happened to them, but rarely have I heard someone say she wanted to come to terms with herself.

I decided to come out to my friends. I’ve been open, exposed hidden fears, told the story of my past, shared the present.

So why would I ever consider dyeing my gray hairs?

It was a fleeting moment, a quick confession to my husband, who in return replied that he couldn’t see me maintaining a dyed hairdo.

I gave up using shampoo and conditioner almost two years ago. I buy my clothing secondhand or make it myself. And considering I spent most of my teenage years wearing safety pinned or duct taped clothing and found myself fashionable, I am far from gracing the pages of Elle magazine.

But what I do have is a strong sense of the person I am: what I mean to others, what I mean to myself, and how necessary it is for me to be open and honest in order to continue to grow.

I told my neighbor about the grays and she suggested a good dye job. In a fit of laughter, she said she couldn’t have any gray-headed neighbors. She knows me, though, and within minutes decided a dye job would be fake on me, and not just because it comes out of a bottle. In the six years we have known each other, she has grown to love me as the person I am: makeup free, shampoo free, barefoot, old green sweatpants wearing, Social Distortion blaring through open windows friend.

It might be years before I become completely gray. By next year I might be posting pictures of my family and people will question if I am my husband’s mother.

It will be me, though, gray or not.