Dear M

It feels silly to say something like this but... thanks for stroking my hair when you hugged me last time. It seemed like a big deal to me when you did it but I couldn't figure it out, it was just a natural thing you did in the moment, and if my students are hugging me and crying I do the same with them... but then I remembered growing up and wanting my hair played with and my mom always saying "not now" or just doing a half-hearted pat which made me sad more than anything, and then later with partners who also refused: "I'm tired," "it's stupid that you want that," "stop asking." My mom made me have all my hair cut off specifically so she didn't have to spend time on it and I used to measure it every morning in the mirror, waiting for it to grow back, and then she'd take me in again to have it chopped off. I got called awful names for having a short, ugly haircut... from second grade all the way til I graduated. My sisters were allowed to have longer hair because theirs was thinner and didn't tangle like mine did.

So I guess hair is a big deal to me. It's messy (long now), never quite right, falls out when I'm stressed. But when you touched it I felt less ugly and subhuman for a moment. It was a nice, safe feeling.

The funny thing is that the night before I went in to see you, I dreamt a lot of my hair fell out again and I'd have to put it up in a twist so no one would notice as much. It was so real that I woke up and thought, damn, I need to leave enough time to figure out a good way to put my hair up before I go to M's....