A girl's inborn right to curls...

Sometimes you need to go around the world and back to find your true self and understand what you're all about. To reassess your feelings and motivations in life, to realize what you want from the others and from yourself, to reconsider your expectations or, quite the contrary, to set them even higher up.

And also, sometimes you can find simple answers to over-complicated questions such as "What am I looking for?", "What do I really want?". You can find them simply floating around you and waiting for you to bring them into your conscientious thought, you can find them while you're reading books or listening to other people speaking...and sometimes you can even find them looking into the mirror and trying to realize what the person looking back at you is really all about.

For as long as I can remember, I've "disapproved" of my curls. I know it's a stiff and formal term, but I don't want to use the word "hate". Cause it wasn't really that bad (although in bad hair days I've used the H word quite a few times...). I always wanted my hair to be straight, probably reminiscing from the Barbie dolls that I used to play with when I was little and who all had shiny straight hair. Probably from the cover of the magazines that I read as a teenager that all claimed straight hair as the no.1 sex-appeal-feature for the opposite sex.

And probably from my own feeling of over-complicating things... I'm not going to lie...I'm no picnic for a guy. I'm actually quite a handful. I'm opinionated, stubborn, I dream big dreams, I know what I want and how to get it...I can be quite a shaky ground for a guy. And probably this is one of the reasons that drove me into considering that my curly hair was over-complicating things even more. There is an episode "Sex and the city"(possibly my favorite episode) in which Mr.Big, the love of Carrie's life, decides to leave her and marry the spiritless and boring Natascha.

Sitting with her friends, Carrie remembers the movie "The way we were" with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, in which Hubbell(Robert Redford) leaves Katie(Barbra Streisand) because she's complicated and she has wild curly hair...and marries a "simpler" girl, dull and straight-haired. Following that thought, in the end of the episode, Carrie asks Mr.Big who has just gotten married to Natascha ,,Why wasn't I the one? Just so that I know". And he just answers "I don't know...it all got so complicated". Which makes Carrie thing again about Hubbell and Katie and to realize that she's "Katie". That the world is made of two types of women - "Katies" and "Simple girls".

That episode is probably my favorite. It has so much truth in it and so much sadness at the same time. When Carrie looks at Mr.Big driving away in his limousine, with his newly-wedded wife, she just concludes that "Maybe some women are just not meant to be tamed.Maybe they need to run free until they meet someone just as wild to run with...".

Every time I watch that episode, I feel "Katie" too. I'm the complicated Katie, with wild curly hair, the one who's a handful for a man, who makes things incredibly complicated...The one to which men prefer "simpler" girls, with straight hair... Everything in life is about curls. Curls imply mistery, ambiguity, surprise, unknown. On the other hand, straight hair is easy to figure out, it's straightforward, it's "comfortable". And what do men want the most? Something easy, comfortable and cosy...

I've had my times when I wanted to be "comfortable", to be a "simple" girl, to be the one that "Mr.Big" would drive away in a limousine with and fade away into the sunset. As career-driven as I've always been, as stubborn and well-spoken...when it came to love, deep inside I've unconsciously wanted to fit the profile of the "simple girl", the one "Mr.Big" and "Hubbell" end up with...Not the one that watches them bitterly driving away. And I haven't succeeded in doing that. I never did.

And you know what? That's perfectly fine. Probably for the first time in my life...that's just fine. Because for the first time I've realized that I don't and cannot possibly be a "simple girl". That no matter how straight I can get my hair to be, deep inside I'll still be a "Katie". I'll still be the complicated, want-it-all Katie. And I'll still be searching for that man who would chose me instead of the simple straight-haired girl...For that man who would chose the hard way out, not the easy way. The one who would have enough courage and manhood to "tame" Katie. To discover what "Katie" is all about, what incredibly loving soul lies underneath her complicated image.

There are people who haven't even known the "wild curly haired" Diana. I've been doing my hair straight for as far as I can remember or, if not straight, just slightly wavy...just hinting at curliness but not admitting it for fear of complication. I even laugh at remembering that a couple of years ago I accidentally ran into one of my ex-boyfriends on the street and it was one of the almost unique days in which I had my hair curled as it naturally is. While we talked, he kept staring at me in a way that I had probably never seen him stare before, not even when we were a couple. In the end, he just almost-whispered something like "I don't know how to put it but you kinda look...radiant. You look...hm...great...".

Any girl knows that there's nothing as reassuring as a compliment from one of your ex-es. It's the best type of ego-boost you could ever find. However, while I was walking away (yes, I must admit, with my ego substantially tickled) it just struck me. In all the months that we dated, he had never seen me with my hair loose. All that time, he had dated the "simple girl". And...incredibly enough...he seemed to like "Katie" better. In the relationship with him, I had always tried to "keep it simple", not to complicate things, not to implicate too much of the real me. Looking back now, I realize that the poor guy never dated ME. He didn't know anything about me, about my dreams, about my way of seeing life. He had dated the girl that I was trying to be at that time, at only 19 years old. He dated the "Simple girl wannabe", the one who thought that love comes at a price. At the price of changing yourself and moulding yourself into a person worth-loving. That 19-year-old girl just couldn't understand that a "Katie" could never become a "simple girl". For as much as she would try to.

At that point, I didn't have the full revelation. I couldn't drive myself into believing that someone would just love me for...me. Not because I ever lacked self-esteem nor self-confidence, but simply because...I always kept my eyes wide open and saw what was going on around me. I saw what boys my age were choosing. I saw the kind of girl that they wanted for themselves. And when you're 19, you don't always think about the philosophy of life and about being loved for who you are. There are lonely days in which you just want to feel loved. Full stop. There are days in which you realize that you're too much of a handful for people to handle. That you're intimidating guys and driving them away. And then you try to change yourself, you try to "fake it"...whether it's about your dreams, your irony, your stubbornness or just your curls.

Now, however...I found myself looking in the mirror and missing "Katie". Being here for all these months really made me realize that "Katies" are hard to find. That the world is full of "simple girls" and that the wheel does turn. That deep inside "simple girls" would just die to be "Katies". It's been a week since I'm sporting my curls. I don't know how nor when I started being the "Wild curly haired" Diana again. I just know that I did. And I also know that I'm never going back to the "simple girl wannabe". Never. It may sound silly, but I feel free...I feel that, for the first time in my life possibly, I really WANT to be 100% true to myself. I don't want to fake anything. I don't want to fake straight hair, I don't want to fake impressions, I don't want to fake relationships.

And the fact is...I truly am a "Katie". I want it all. I want to get my big career and revolution the world...or at least a part of it :). I want LOVE. "Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other-love", not lame and spiritless love. I want that love that can move mountains, not that love that is too "comfortably numb" to move even an inch. And you know what? I deserve it. I CAN handle it, I'm not afraid of it anymore. I'm not afraid of what the man in my life will think of me nor of whether he will want a "simpler" girl. If he wants the simpler girl, than he is definitely not "my man". And if he's not...I will just continue to run free. Until I meet someone just as wild to run with.