My Britney Moment
This event has been planned for weeks in my mind. I storm through the front door, undress, and throw my clothes on the white sheets and pillows-covered bed. I enter the now brightly lit bathroom with a fully loaded electric razor and stand in front of the mirror. A little push in the right direction and the machine starts to buzz.
Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment in evening entertainment but tonight there’ll be some love,
Alex Turner yells into my ear. Tonight there’ll be a ruckus, yeah, regardless of what’s gone before.
It’s about time. I’m not allowed to think anymore. Now is the time for action. I place the vibrating device on my head and it starts to shred through my hair. Dark tufts rain down around me. In a few minutes, I will be a new person.
I’m the artist of my own self. I try to optimize my body, my appearance, and my clothes so that they no longer cause me any problems. In my mind and the outside world. Because I’m in a constant battle between minimalism, depression, and mulling over irrelevancies. And, let’s be honest, a big chunk of laziness too.
Usually, it’s the same story all over again. I think about reducing my lifestyle in terms of food, habits, or stuff I own. The longer the decision to do so runs through my thoughts, the result is always something like: sure, why not? So I delete it.
Sometimes it returns somehow but usually I don’t give a fuck about it and it just disappears from my mind, my future, and my life. If I don’t regret doing it immediately, I know that I’ve made the right decision. Like shaving my head and thinking: This action brings me one step closer to my ultimate self.
There must be no more options, just my own unique and individual standard. It’s time to emancipate myself from my doubts. That’s why I choose one path in every single respect. And I try to stick to it, with some adjustments of course. The universe is chaotic enough. So I’m happy about any lack of alternatives—even if it’s only brought about by myself.
This is my Britney moment. The big difference between her situation and mine is that she did it out of mental desperation and I did it out of an unavoidable step in my perfectionist master plan.
The liberating feeling you get when you run an electric razor through your hair and realize that there’s no going back now is probably somewhere between orgasm and murder. And it’s only that good the first time. That’s for sure. Because from now on it’ll be just another routine that I have to implement into my life. It’ll soon become completely normal for me.
I look at my work of art in the mirror. No racing heart, no regrets. Just absolute satisfaction that I no longer have to worry about this part of my life. And, who knows, maybe Britney felt the same.