I called my hairdresser today to make an appointment. "It's getting too long," I said, "the sides need to be buzzed and cleaned up."

A year ago, I never dreamed I'd be saying those words, and the thought of cutting off even a few inches of my waist-length curly brown hair that had cascaded down my back for as long as I can remember, was totally unrealistic to me. So riddle me how the hell I ended up with this edgy pixie cut, formerly reserved for little boys?

Well, I'll tell you the story of how exactly it happened.

I remember seriously considering cutting my hair for the first time at about this time last year. I was on vacation at the beach with my family, and I was getting fed up with how long it was. For the first time in my life I can remember thinking my hair was too long instead of wishing it were longer. I'd been obsessed in the previous years with having that super feminine and long "goddess" hair that we saw in every ad, fashion campaign, and viral tumblr photo known to mankind, and I really did have the right hair for that look. It curled into soft waves naturally, it was extremely healthy as I'd never dyed it and rarely used heat on it. It had been getting progressively longer and longer for years, as I would never get more than two inches taken off at each trip to the salon.

I loved my long hair, but after I started considering cutting it for real, I realized something: the people around me seemed to be more attached to my hair than I was. Girls at my high school who I barely knew would fawn over how pretty my hair was, members of my small hometown community would tell me how I had "disney princess hair", and to put the icing on the cake, I was voted "best hair" by my senior class in our senior superlatives.

That's when I realized it. Not only did my long hair turn very frizzy very quickly, shed everywhere, overheat me to the EXTREME in the summer, and require gallons of hair product to keep up with (the expensive kind. Ouidad, you're welcome for the ridiculous amount of money I spent on your products over the years. You owe me one.), but long hair was and is just not me. No disrespect to Disney princesses, but that's just not my thing. On the inside, I felt creative and rebellious, but my outside didn't match in large part because of my hair that I'd grown so attached to.

So there I sat, my head burning from the added insulation of long hair in our beach vacation house, ravenously pinning pictures of mid-length dark red styles to my "Hair" board on Pinterest. A few weeks of searching later, I found myself in a salon chair talking it over with my stylist, Lexi (whom I would trust to do absolutely anything to my hair, despite being only 20 years old, like myself) and this is what happened...

Looking back, the chop was much less dramatic than it felt. Believe it or not, that was me with about 8 fewer inches of hair than before, and it was still really long. Long story short, I loved it. I loved the shorter length, and I especially loved the red-violet custom color Lexi had mixed for me. I felt edgier and more myself, and all was well in the world of Mariel's hair for awhile, until things started to change.

My hair was completely virgin before going red. I hadn't even had so much as that failed attempt at bleaching and box dying, that most of my friends had during our middle school years. On top of this being the first time I'd ever had my hair dyed, I was also headed back to college. This may not be a big deal for some people, but my first year at college had caused me some hair trouble. I believe it was from certain nutrition I was missing out on due to the sub par dining hall food, along with the dry and harsh air that comes along with living on the fourth floor of a dorm building in the winter, but my hair experienced really bad breakage my first year of college. Basically, that same breakage began to happen but about 10 times worse.

I don't know what fantasy world I was living in, but not once did it cross my mind that the hair dye was causing all that breakage. I spent the better part of last winter extremely upset and trying to figure out why my hair was basically coming out in giant clumps in the shower.

Finally, after having it dyed a couple more times, my hair adjusted and the breakage stopped for the most part, but I was growing weary of the dying process. If any of you have been red-violet before, you know it's one of the most difficult colors to maintain. I was needing to have my hair re-dyed every two months, and let's be honest, a full-time college student doesn't need to be spending a couple hundred bucks every two months at the salon. Any of you who have been red-violet also know that it's nearly impossible to lift red dye from hair, and requires extensive bleaching and dying if you want to change your hair color to something new. I didn't know this before coloring it initially, and looking back, I wish I'd done some research. So at this point I had two options: let the red grow out and have ridiculous looking roots, or chop it all off.

I went with option two, obviously. I'd always loved pixie cuts, but I thought my thick and curly hair wouldn't look good in a short cut. Upon discussing it with Lexi, she told me that I was wrong (quite apparently, I had a thing or two to learn about hair) and that my hair texture would most certainly look good in a pixie. Fast forward a month and I was in her salon chair once again preparing to actually chop all of it off. Honestly, I was really excited and Lexi was more nervous about the cut than I was. This is the final product, and my current style..

.

It really just suits me inside and out, and I can't see myself trying to grow it out anytime soon. I'm going to leave you with a couple pieces of hair advice that I've learned through the saga that was my hair over this past year:

1. Short hair will make you look older and more mature. People will tell you so all the time.

2. Short hair can look super professional, really edgy, and even extremely girly depending on how you choose to style it that day.

3. THE LENGTH OF YOUR HAIR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR FEMININITY OR SEXUALITY.

4. #3 AGAIN LOUDLY FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

5. The opinions of boys with $10 buzz-cuts don't determine that having long hair is the only way to be "hot". You do you, you'll look great.

6. You don't actually look like a little boy, unless that was what you were going for.

7. People will think you're like, totally badass for having short hair.

8. You actually are totally bad ass for having short hair.

9. You'll be a lot less attached to your hair after you cut it the first time. This is a good thing. It's only hair, and it all grows back.

10. There will always be a million reasons not to cut it. If any part of you wants to try short hair, just do it. It was one of the best decisions I've made in a long time.