creative writing samples

I only started wearing it because I just really wanted to grow out my stupid bangs. On the last day of elementary school, I left with bangs too thick to see my eyebrows, and they poked the tops of my eyelids every time I blinked, constantly reminding me of the tragic mistake I had made six months before. I was attempting some kind of “rocker chick” look, but in reality they were often unevenly trimmed, and the oils caused me to break out on my forehead. I picked it out of my drawer of irrelevant stuff (we all have one), and it was probably because I felt bad for it since the only action it’s ever gotten was the slightest displacement whenever I opened and closed the drawer every few blue moons. It did the job, since headbands made my short bangs stick out of my head like a male lion on the brink of puberty, and bobby pins always fell out as the result of my constant need to break out in dance at the slightest tune. I used to only wear it around the house, because who the heck would wear it on top of their head like that. But sometimes, I thought my personality was outlandish enough for me to pull off the look in public. So one day I did, and then I kept doing it because it made life easier. On the first day of high school, I wore my trademark hair accessory: a hair bow, as silky as a designer dress, and whiter than my teeth could ever be. A bridge away from my preceding school, I started anew in high school and progressively became noted as “The Girl With The Bow”. Oh, what a infamous title it was. “Oh, you’re that girl with the bow that’s in my *insert common class here*”, nameless faces chirped, “I love how you wear a bow everyday!” I loved how I wore a bow everyday, too, because people actually remembered me and I was no longer a stranger. What a neat concept, not being a strange person. Wow, people want to be friends with me!? What a foreign sensation this is! I liked the uniqueness that the bow gave me, I thought it relatively encompassed my self-proclaimed weird personality, while also looking like a eighth grader with lots of spunk and cuteness. In every Get To Know Me questionnaire, social media bio, and interesting fact prompt was the words “girl” and “bow”. My locker was covered in paper bows for my birthday, and my friends wore a bow on their heads in commemoration. A new teacher learned my name right away because I told her I always wore a bow. Snagging every chance I could to grow my bow collection, I bought all the bows I could find, disregarding if I would actually wear it because it’s the idea that counts. I owned fourteen bows at my peak, and I tried to not repeat bows as much as I could, although my favourite was the original, but now off-white, bow. Grade nine came and went, and somewhere in the first page of grade ten I turned a new leaf. My bangs had grown out ages ago, causing the chunk of hair pinned back by the clip to flop over to one side of my head. It made my hair look a bit wonky and unkempt. There was no more functionality with the hairstyle, and like my bangs, I grew out of the look. Like bootcut jeans, growing out of trends and styles is a part of life, so I didn’t think too much of it. However, everyone else thought differently. At first, I was fine with the light pestering. “Hey where’s your bow?” “Yo, wear a bow again, I miss it.” I’d reply with a simple excuse, like one regarding that chunk of my hair that flops around as if I had a Muppets-style ‘do and hair only grew out of one part of my scalp. I get it, it’s a change, comments questioning the decision should be expected. But the longer I didn’t bring the bow back, the more it leaned towards a protest from raging fans. “Puh-leaaase bring the bow back!” My friends badgered me in a low-key “I’m kidding, but I’m really not kidding” tone. “Who the heck do you think you are, where’s your bow?” I’m a jokester, and I like –no, I adore– pestering friends with banter as much as the next guy. But there comes a point somewhere after not wearing a bow for a few weeks where outsiders shouldn’t really be outwardly grieving for something as frivolous as a hair accessory. Acquaintances approach me with small talk by starting with a question about what happened to The Bow. A couple of teachers even called me out in the hallway telling me that they almost didn’t recognize me without the bow. To this day, my friends still ask me to bring back the bow. It’s been two years. How is it that a girl can dye her hair bright red and have it be something expected a few weeks after the change, but when I decide to ditch a freaking hairbow, the sky fell a few feet, and people won’t let me forget I did that? Is a hair accessory as significant to someone’s identity as a birthmark on a cheek or the bright ocean blue’s of an iris? Is a treasured pullover sweater, pilling from the dozens of wash cycles, more significant than a personality to be remembered by? A bow was significant enough for strangers to remember me, significant enough to leave a suitable pink emoji as an online bio and have people understand who it referred to, but was it enough for me to appear like I’m a changed person the moment it came off? We are a specie of more dimensions than we could ever realize or admit; a dimension each for our strengths and weaknesses, flaws and passions, favourite foods, pet-peeves, mistakes and accomplishments, and everything in between. The melanin embedded in our skins, the belief or disbelief of a higher power, the unique flavours of our home country, or clothes we wear should not be the deciding factor that tells a society whether we pass or fail. Maybe we should stop seeing each other as single-dimension pictures on the cover of a novel, and read the story instead.