Don't Be So Gullible, Girl!
#024 The ♆ Neptune Warning I Needed on September 17th
Word Count: 2426/12 minute read
After two years of growing out my hair I decided to get a brand new hairdo.
Color.
Cut.
But even though Chani Nicholas warned me about the learnings the Lunar Eclipse in Pisces would bring this week — my brand new do is terrifying.
Context
Right to be forgotten laws are emerging across Europe — the laws that make it possible for our digital selves of the past to be wiped away (They’re talking to you, YouTube — take down that video of me!).
When I scroll through the online activity of my own past, there’s so much cringe I’m trying to reckon with. But nothing — for me — is more cringe than to see how gullible I’ve been. And as I emerge into what feels like a new life, this worn out and old gullible aspect of myself is trying to tag along.
To be someone who is brand new or just plainly renewed, that gullible pal has to go.
Sure, he’s made it possible to have wild adventures across this span of life. But he’s also brought a lot of digital and IRL pain — happenings that I have repeated over and over again unconsciously.
It was this week’s visit to the salon that finally revealed the royal fuckery running in the background of my mind. I have a bug, the overly trusting bug — and that shit’s dangerous for anyone.
Divination
If you’re not interested in divination — maybe your ancestors were.
And if you’re a teeny bit curious (or even if you’re skeptical) you may be interested to know that earlier European cancel culture — hello Martin Luther (scroll to “Early Modern Period”) — helped usher in the split between the church and all things stars.
But divination’s been making a comeback in the West. It’s not overgeneralized as it more than likely was in the past, given the limited tools of astronomy at that time.
Now, modern humans can better intuit celestial messages.
Nicholas says that the medicine this eclipse is bringing us over these next two weeks is potent. It’s an elixir for surfacing the unconscious part of who we are (sometimes referred to as the shadow side of ourselves). She goes on to say that it’s shining a light on the stuff we do to self-sabotage, pick at our own wounds, and the gunky stuff that makes us ask the question, Why do I keep doing this?
She then highlights what’s especially unconscious for all of us — how we deceive ourselves.
When it has ever come down to me and my hair — well it’s one area where I’ve consistently been deceived (for real). And on the day of the eclipse it dawned on me — Why do I keep letting people do my hair who are incapable of doing my hair?
But what’s behind that question and deeper might be: Why do I persist in becoming others’ experiments?
Hesitation
To be fair, I didn’t want a hair cut from the salon I walked into. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted my hair colored, and I planned to go to a barber afterwards to finish up.
Rather than walking into the salon with a brand new cut, I walked in there with all of my hair and the awareness that I was going to eventually cut it. So, there were two cash opportunities for the salon during my consultation, and two separate issues at the door of my recent memories.
The first fresh memory was that a stylist told me that having longer hair helps the color stick at the roots. But maybe that was only for bleach blonde? If I’d not had this information I might have followed with my original plan, gotten my hair cut first, and avoided the story in this here letter altogether.
The second teetered between the relational dynamics I had with barbers. Don’t get me wrong here. I love a good barbershop — their conversations, and the humor.
But, sometimes some barbers flirt with you. Sometimes barbers think you’re flirting with them — um no. I’m just a funny gal sometimes and I take pleasure in telling stories and laughing with you — because we’re human and that’s what we do, right?
When you decline their dates or advances, their self-protection emotional selves go into overdrive and you’re no longer treated as a paying client, but as — a child?
Gender aside, the other issue is not being listened to as a client.
The last barber I had this year didn’t listen to me when I informed her that she was cutting off too much of my hair. When I alerted her to this issue, she self-corrected. But at the next visit she ended up repeating her old mistakes — even as I warned her. So, I arrived at home with a clump of my own hair in my palms, a raggedy, annoying hairline, and perhaps a weakened sense that my own voice failed to protect me.
In an effort to repair the damage, I began growing out the areas she cut off in error, and I hunted for a new barber who could style my hair and send me on my way.
The new barber that I had on my mind was a male, and more than likely capable of cutting my hair — a whole section on Reddit explained so.
With this whole new hairdo in mind, I walked by his shop three times, but when I didn’t see him — the owner — I hesitated to walk inside, and introduce myself to one of his employees because of my worries about speaking the language here or interrupting the employee. I could have used deepl (my preferred translation tool) to translate, but I didn’t.
Can you see the neurosis?
I hesitate.
I hesitate to visit or talk to the right people.
I hesitate to scope out the thing.
I’m usually worried without the actual reality of the thing that should be worrying. I feel like I’m going to bother someone or annoy them or encounter a situation I don’t want.
And it seems that hesitation is gullibility’s partner in crime, making me vulnerable to overly confident yapping.
Consultation
The salon required me to come in for a consultation and when I arrived there were two men standing before me, and the receptionist, a woman.
I didn’t think of the power dynamics at play then. I didn’t recognize that I was shopping alone, and that there were three salespersons before me. When I found out that one guy did the cutting, and one guy did the color, I voiced my concern.
“I don’t need a cut consultation.” I say. But it’s the last time I speak what I want.
An Italian man speaks next, bulldozing over my request. It’s the moment in which I don’t stand my ground. He’s confident enough to let me know his own son “has Afro hair just like me” and therefore he can cut my hair.
My brain recognizes this as a red flag — like the ways in which some folks in the U.S. might use a friendship to prove their values, “I have a Black friend!” But then my brain says, You’re not in the U.S. And right there begins the self-doubt that chips away at the red flag that’s been exchanged for cultural sensitivity.
Complex human ish, eh?
Next, the colorist tells me the color I want is not possible. He says that my hair’s going to be a bit darker. I’m okay with this because I expected that response, and I appreciate that he’s clarified with me. My hair will be multi-toned? Cool. I think.
But it’s the Italian stylist towering over me, who says for the third of fourth time, “My son, his hair is just like yours. I can cut your hair.” I don’t like that he’s telling me about his one child, his one Afro-haired client as is said here in Europe.
More importantly though, I’m unable to convert the subtle, wispy agitation I feel into language that protects me from the humiliation that will soon take place.
The feeling in my body is still and light, and I am not animated. I wasn’t animated when the stylist spoke at all. I wasn’t clasping my hands together with excitement. I wasn’t moving.
I was still, like every rabbit before a wolf.
It was like the NO inside of me didn’t know how to save me from myself. It’s like it was buried down deep and I’ve been too much of a YES character in this world. NO hasn’t had much of a job, and when I needed NO to show up, it’s an awkward meeting of two estranged beings.
I’ve gone over this with my therapist before though — the body literacy of the stillness and its immovability, is my protection. It is my personal NO.
Sadly, this wisdom wasn’t accessible that day. And as I sat in the salon chair, I scanned my body for a movement, a twitch — anything. But because I’ve forgotten and my body-literacy skills failed to accurately decode the message, I mistook stillness for, this is okay, and this was my next great big gullible mistake.
My other self-defense mechanism was offline too, because in the moment I don’t hear the undercurrent of the stylist’s words, that he’s telling me in his thirty or so years of cutting hair, he’s only had one Afro-haired client. I don’t hear that he has no idea what 3a, 3b, 3c, 4a, 4b, or 4c hair is at all. I don’t hear that he doesn’t know the difference between wavy, curly, coily, kinky, and zig-zag hair types.
But why dearest laws of the universe and powers that be, could I not stand my ground, and stick to my original plan?
Salon-clipse
About a week later I arrive three minutes late for my 10am appointment on the day of the eclipse. The colorist let’s me know that I’ll get my hair cut first. I’m concerned. I’m sitting in the chair, looking at myself in the mirror, resting on hope. Red flag.
The Italian stylist doesn’t own a hair pick. Red flag.
He squeezes my hair like it’s a pillow which is weird. Red flag.
I incorrectly scan my body again, searching for sensations. My body feels ghostly and I know something is wrong, but again I’ve forgotten that this stillness is my body’s warning. I can’t open my mouth to simply say, let’s cancel this cut. I can’t get up out of the chair either.
Nothing in me fights the incoming humiliation. Nothing.
Then he grabs my hair with two fingers — two whole fingers that he uses as measuring tools. I think that his two-finger grip on my hair is so weird, and I know that I’m worried, but I’m frozen in the chair.
He puts a comb on top of my long hair, and he cuts it with clippers and not scissors. He’s not cutting my hair between the coil like the best stylists and barbers do.
Then the cut’s all over.
When I go upstairs for the color treatment I hope that this hair cut isn’t as bad as some part of me now feels it is.
The color goes swimmingly.
The shampoo session afterwards is fine.
But during the conditioning session the colorist does not use a wide tooth comb in my wet, coily hair — he opts instead to use a brush no person in my family would ever purchase — ever. Not all hair brushes work for all hair types, and the brush he is trying to use on me can rip my wet coily hair out of my scalp.
I’m leaning back, and caught up in the thought, Why doesn’t he understand this? How is it that I know the differences for brushes for different hair types, and I’m not a stylist?
But why don’t I say something?
Why am I mute?
Why do I go mute when I need my voice?
Next, the colorist rubs a towel over my hair and I know that he’s ruined the chance for my coils to form and I’m going to have to repeat the shampoo and conditioner to get my curly-coils back when I get home.
I head downstairs, and the stylist wants to see me again.
He pats my hair into a puff ball.
I don’t feel anger — I feel gullibility. I knew this would happen — and I let it.
I run my fingers through my hair and destroy his puff ball, and I feel the error. He tells me to stop — that I’m doing my hair wrong.
I ignore him. I run my fingers through my hair. He attempts to pat it back into a ball. I run my fingers through my hair again — it’s some type of NO.
What in the psycho-spirituality is this delayed response, Danver Chandler?
It’s the eclipse conjunct Neptune (the video’s cued up for you!). Neptune’s tricky, distracting, magical, delusional — yet imaginative energy is right here and I finally see what I’ve been doing.
Moments later I put on my hat and stand at the cash register.
The stylist, and the colorist tell me to take my hat off. But my hat is the only way I can communicate how I’m not proud of their work. They tell me my hat will stain. I open my mouth and say, “It’s okay that my hat will stain,” before I pay (yes, I pay), and walk out of the door.
Self-Deceit and Gullibility
The Lunar eclipse effectively made a few things conscious for me. My hesitations have taken me further from what I want. And gullibility has been a real ghost — a gnarly demon, even.
I don’t think I was always this way — ineffective at self-protection. As a child I used to speak up for myself, a lot. Too much, some might say. But after a time I remember it didn’t work.
One abusive relationship after the next.
One toxic workplace after the next.
It all begins to reprogram you.
It colors your world. It cuts you from your own power.
I’m not beating myself up here for learning a lesson later than desired. I’m grateful I can see, and feel, and understand and even correct this issue with even more attention.
You see, I’m not in the abusive partnerships now. I’m not in the toxic work spaces now. And perhaps this eclipse has simply said, And you’re not in the business of being gullible anymore either.
Many thanks to Foster for its writing circles and other writerly resources that have made it possible for me to nourish my personal writing practice.
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💙 the blue heart seems to work on multiple levels here! I relate tremendously to this process. May we find our no’s more easily from here on out.