It’s one of those mornings where I have so much tumbling through my mind that I can’t fix on any single emotion, so I feel vaguely like an emotion-o-scope and a bit panicky.

We have a beautiful home. I’m not boasting, I’m just making an observation. I was walking through the hall to get socks and it hit me: we have a truly relaxing and comforting home environment. Part of that beauty comes from the collective soul that has grown from the mishmash of stuff we own — the books, the plants, the candlesticks, the musical instruments, the art — that somehow works together without any advance planning on our part. It’s just simply beautiful.

Then I was hit with a wave of guilt. How can I be so unhappy sometimes when I have such a beautiful shell to cocoon in?

Then that wave overflowed into the rest of my life. How can I be so unhappy when people would kill to have my job? When women tell me that they wish they’d met my husband first and does he have a brother or would I object to cloning? When I’ve had the opportunity to complete not one but two university degrees? When people repeatedly offer me help, love and support, and keep trying to make lunch dates, coffee dates, pub dates?

Why do I (inexplicably, insanely) try to push all of that away? Why do I still feel that guilt? Why can’t I just be happy?

In other news, I cut my hair yesterday and that was traumatic too. I have a love/hate relationship with my crowning glory. It’s naturally curly, which can be good (as you straight-haired persons know) and evil (as all of you ringlet-cursed persons know). I hate spending time on how I look, so I usually just stick my head under the tap, comb it out, run a tiny bit of conditioner through it with my fingers and leave. Going to the hairdresser is awful. I hate it because they always condescend to me. They pick up a lock of my hair with the tips of their fingers, give me that artificial hairdresser smile in the mirror and ask when the last time I had my hair trimmed. Well, months ago, because every hairdresser I go to in the city makes me feel like a worm for not devoting at least half an hour a day to styling. Besides, in my opinion, paying someone to cut your hair every six weeks is like buying new socks: for some reason I always feel that they should last longer than they do, and that there are other more pressing things that my money needs to address.

I adore long hair. My goal is to have flowing Pre-Raphaelite locks cascading down my back. I constantly struggle to hold that goal in balance with the “if you trim your hair it will grow faster” concept. On top of that, I have on a couple of occasions been so angry at someone or something that I have gone to a salon and told them to cut it all off, only to go home, look in the mirror and burst into tears. It’s never the same again. I carry all that with me every time I walk into a salon, that anger, that anguish, that inferior I-am-a-worm feeling, the inevitable mute stubbornness that rises in response to the worm thing. I dislike hair appointments immensely. On top of it all, I have to rub salt into the wound by paying someone for the experience.

Which is why I have to sort of sneak up on myself and just do it. There’s a salon in Oakville that I love, but I only visit my parents about four times a year and usually during holiday weekends, so they’re either closed or booked. I try a different salon here every time, in an attempt to discover a place or at least a hairdresser I get along with. Last year I finally one who just cuts my hair, no pomp, no fuss, no guilt: the little shop attached to the Zellers near my old apartment. I love them. I get no lectures, no fluff about how if my hair was cut in layers it would curl more (no, it just frizzes more because there’s no more weight to keep it down), no false friendliness. You can’t even get an appointment — you just show up, they write your name down, and you wait. I’ve known that my hair needed a trim for about a month, but we just happened to be in the mall yesterday and I said, well, I’ll just get my hair cut, then. So I did. In, out within ten minutes, no one got hurt. A straightforward pageboy kind of cut. Not that you can tell, with all these infernal curls.

When I was little, my mother used to wash my hair for me, then sit me up on a stool in our kitchen with my dressing gown on and a blanket wrapped around me to keep me warm, spray No More Tears on my thick wavy (read tangly) hair, comb it through, then trim the ends for me. I loved it (except for the tangly part) for the I’m-taken-care-of feeling it gave me. I didn’t like the washing of the hair so much, so Mum came up with this pretend hair-washing creature called Beavie who used to hide in the suds and play in my hair, to make me laugh.

I don’t know why I’m so teary. I warned you — I’m all over the place emotionally today. I miss my parents. I want to know why I’m not happy with such a wonderful life.