Angelic Rage: The unexpected effect of toxins on my personality

What started off as a concern over toxins during pregnancy, turned out to be a small step in change. Somewhere during my very early pregnancy, I read an article about the toxins of hair dye and it possible effects on a developing fetus. As I stated early, I was ultra cautious when it came to any potential harm to my child. Almost obsessive compulsive about reading labels, never taking medications, and avoiding things like car exhaust when passing by running cars or being anywhere near second hand smoke. So early on I decided to ditch the bleach bottle and let my hair grow to its natural color.

For those who don't know, I am not a natural blond. My real hair color is the dullest shade, of the most boring, lifeless, mousy brown you've ever seen. Blond is the color I feel most comfortable in though, any other color just doesn't feel like me when I look in a mirror.

Cutting my hair short and letting it return to its natural color was uncomfortable. Along with the physical shape of my body morphing and changing into something unfamiliar, my physical appearance was also someone I didn't yet know.

I'd been dying my hair as far back as I could remember. At the ages of 9 and 10, I begged my mom to let me go blond. Of course it was not allowed. So sunny days were spent drizzling lemon juice on my head, sitting in the yard with my fingers crossed. Later standing in the mirror hoping and praying for a few lightened streaks.

I have to say I did the same thing with make up very early on, at about age six. I wanted make up. Not just play make up, I wanted to wear make up everyday. So I'd smash up brick into bits and us the red powder it made a blush and eye shadow. White rocks I smashed into face powder. Red berries became lipstick. If nothing else I've always been stubbornly determined to achieve whatever my goal is for better or worse.

In my early preteens I learned about peroxide. I think my mom just gave up after that and so I became an everyday blond and loved it. I've never had any intentions of being plain and my decision to let my hair go made me feel exactly that way.

It was a segue way decision that led to other changes in my life. My goal to have the approval of those watching my movement as a young mom took center stage. I learned every on, it is never enough to act the part if you don't look the part. This would be a concept that I would rub against the majority of my life when trying to establish myself in a variety of ways. The truth is, our culture judges solely on appearance alone, and then makes other judgements later based on things like actions and motivations.

Previously I'd been the ultimate Madonna wanna-be. My appearance was a cross between things my idol Madonna inspired and my other culture, that of the urban hip hoppers I adored. Sadly in a predominately Caucasian, rigid thinking, New England type people ..this persona did not fit their rigid and biased, type casted prediction or classification system of a successful parent.

I began to change the way I dressed in order to please the scrutiny I faced as a mom. This worked both for and against me. The adults who judged me from my home town, saw the physical changes that seemed to confirm for them the emotional grow I was going though. On the other hand, I was now in a teen mothers home in an inner city where the culture I felt most comfortable in was prevalent, and I physically no longer represented the social group that I felt most a belonging to.

The personality types I normally attracted wanted to nothing to do with me. This gave me not only an identity confusion but lowered my self esteem and were the first hints of depression settling in.

Like I eluded to early, I did make friends. Both at St. Agnes and at school. Once the girls got to know who I was inside, I gained the friends I would have easily outright made to begin with.

I felt ugly. I felt unlike myself and yet, I had something to prove that was more important than the approval of my peers. I needed to show physically that my focus was on my baby and my success and not on social standing. It was hard on me because I'd lost who I was in the process. I also gained because I did attract a fraction of friends that might never have approached me otherwise. This was high school, and not only was I living in a teen mother home but I was attending a public high school. I was suddenly in school with people I didn't grow up with, who didn't know me for anything but what I appeared to be. It had its positives and negatives. I also began to attract a different type of guy then the ones I would normally have my eye on. But because I didn't look like me, I wasn't treated like me and I found myself not knowing how to even act like me or the me I knew myself to be, anymore. It was awful!

And to think, all this began with throwing out a box of toxic hair dye.

The more out going me before St. Agnes