Between my 2 tattoos, 9 piercings and various different hair colors within the past few years (along with other adventures that shouldn't be published where my mom can read them), I'd say the time I spent contemplating those choices was probably around a week, collectively.

I tend to be a creature of impulse.

So, when I got the sudden urge to chop all of my hair off a few days after Christmas, I moseyed my little "new year, new me" butt down to the salon and told Lisa, "We're getting rid of all of this."

"All of this" was around a foot of hair that I had, shockingly, actually brushed for the occasion. When Lisa asked how long it'd been since my last cut, I mumbled something incoherent and started talking about the weather. Without further ado, she whipped out the scissors and got down to business. And, without further ado, I present to you why it was my best decision in a long time. If you're contemplating the chop, I truly hope you take this to heart.

First of all, goodbye, split ends! At the most basic level, my hair is about 457 percent healthier now. Despite my almost unhealthy love for my long locks, you can't grow your hair for [incoherent mumbling] years without building up a ton of dead weight. Most of the time I would even refuse a trim because I was so attached to the length, so getting rid of all those inches was like starting over. My short hair is softer, more voluminous, and all around floofier than it's ever been. Plus I can sleep with my hair down now without fear of suffocation, so there's that.

Another practical advantage, and possibly my favorite, is that it now takes half as much time to wash my mane and I have significantly more time for standing in the shower contemplating the futility of human existence. And don't even get me started on brushing it -- whereas long-hair me brushed her hair probably three times a week at best, because it just wasn't worth the struggle, short-hair me can actually regularly run a brush through without fear of breaking either it or my neck (not that I actually will... ya girl's a fan of the bedhead look.)

And then there's the utterly new feeling of not getting my hair stuck in doors, seat belts, under my own armpits, under other people's armpits... which was always just as painful and as gross as it sounds. Less hair in my food. Less hair tangled in purse straps and less hair I have to dig out of my collar any time I put on a new layer. For all of its wavy pretty glory, my hair could be a total pain in the ass.

Far outweighing the physical advantages, though, is the way such a drastic change makes me feel mentally and emotionally.

For years, I hid behind my hair -- literally and figuratively. When I was not feeling my outfit or having a bad face day, I could tousle my hair and leave the house feeling like slightly less of a hideous swamp creature. I can't tell you how many selfies I've taken with my hair strategically covering a pimple (or a hickey...yikes) and, real talk, if my boobs looked weird in the top I was wearing, I didn't have to worry about it because my hair would be all up in there anyway. My long, unruly hair was almost always the first thing a person would notice and comment on, so it became a kind of buffer between me and what I perceived to be the judgments of everyone else. I did truly love it and found it pretty, but I can't honestly say how much of my attachment to it was my own and how much was based on the rest of the world.

Feeling that first heavy chunk of hair fall to the floor was liberating not just for my poor, burdened head, but for the years and years I had spent hearing from loved ones and strangers alike, "Your hair is so pretty, don't ever cut it." I felt free, defiant and a little silly imagining the hair piling up under my chair as a giant "#@$% you" to everyone who thought they had a say in what I do to my body. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like Mulan chopping off her hair to go save China and her family's honor.

In the end, though, it's just hair. Just a weird, evolutionary thing that I can't even pretend I fully understand because high school biology is a blurry time for me. It's just hair. It didn't define me then, and it doesn't define me now... but it feels a hell of a lot better now to run my hand through it and not find tumbleweeds, four bobby pins, a potato chip and a boatload of insecurities.