u/Front-Kale4042

And why do they often have different theme songs, or different theme song montages?

I consider myself to be a do-gooder and always want to help others, and recently, my mind has turned to hair donations, which I have thought of subconsciously throughout my hair growth journey. I love the idea of giving to someone, but as the years have gone on, I have decided it might be more difficult than I had thought, due to the following factors:

-Attachment/sense of identity: After a life of short-medium hair, I always thought it would be easy to "just go back and start again" after growing and then donating it, but after many years, the idea of going even 6 inches shorter feels alien to me. My hair has become part of me, a security blanket that I would feel incomplete without.

-Unmet length goals: After plateauing at my dream length (waist length) for several years, I would love to experience tailbone or even classical length before cutting it.

-Time and investment to grow out.

-Traumatic associations: See hair conflicts timeline.

HAIR CONFLICTS TIMELINE

-Preteenhood: My mom takes me for frequent "trims" to my childhood hairdresser who, regardless of what I say, cuts it to my chin. I wanted long hair because there were girls at school who had it, but my mom for some reason had this idea that my hair just grew very slowly therefore it wasnt growing long, even though it grew at a normal rate outside of the haircuts.

-Teenagehood: My mind is on other things and I just don't have to patience to grow out my hair, so I keep it medium-length.

-Late teenagehood: My hair is long but chlorine damaged so needs to be cut short. I then keep it short due to an identity crisis and reduced self-confidence stemming from a trauma-induced ED (see a previous post).

-Early twenties: I defy the "status quo" and grow my hair to waist length with trimming and proper care, but this period of my life coincided with a series of emotionally traumatic events that created a negative association with short and even medium hair lengths.

-Mid-twenties: I become preoccupied with life and mental health challenges (including confronting previous traumas) and neglect my hair, leading to a length plateau with breakage that I am currently overcoming.

I feel like my hair has been tied to a lot of history and hardship, and while I want so, so badly to say "it's just hair" and give it to someone who needs it more, I also feel that cutting it short would be difficult and potentially traumatic for me, like trading my current sense of self and security for a past I tried so hard to overcome.

Anyone who has had similar experiences, I would appreciate you sharing them.

I care about him, but I feel like he has a lot of missed potential that he lacks the wherewithal to use.

He has a very troubling history, and was doing fairly well when we first met before the pandemic, but after 2 years of forced lockdown by his assisted living home (where he mostly stays for subsidized rent) he was not himself for a long time. He started smoking weed regularly, going to bars, blowing his finances, and used to constantly cry poor. He won't work full-time because it would mean losing his disability money (ignoring that a full-time job with his wage would pay far more). The job itself is dead-end and under-utilizes his intellectual abilities. He isn't in the best financial position to "reach for the sky", but I think another big problem is his lack of initiative to improve or change.

For one thing, he doesn't seem to live in reality. He does a lot of things that don't make sense - staying at friend's houses without a change of clothes or a toothbrush, flaking out on elaborate plans last-minute and acting like they can be rescheduled on a dime, running 3+ streaming services when he can barely afford groceries. He struggles with directions, doesn't plan out his transportation routes, and will try to fit unrealistic actions into time-constrained situations - for example, when we were both taking an Uber together so he would go home and I would go to work, he was searching for a convenience store to stop at for a snack, and didn't seem to understand that we couldn't just pop out of the Uber and go to one.

Another problem is that he doesn't seek out resources that can help him. For example, in addition to the disability funds that he gets, he has additional reimbursement services that he doesn't even use properly because he doesn't have all the information to do so. The information is supposedly (mis)managed by his assisted living manager, and I have repeatedly urged him to get a hold of them and get the information but he hasn't done so. There is also a disability transportation service that would really help him that he will not apply to, even though I kept urging him to. He flat-out stated at one point that he likes getting together with his friends who are able to drive him places, ignoring that if he just followed the advice I would give him he wouldn't be as dependent on them.

I understand that I have been too involved up until now and have since backed off. I give very little advice at this point because I I think it is a futile effort. He is on the spectrum and seems to struggle with executive functioning, but I have gotten to wonder if he has an undiagnosed learning disability that seriously impairs his judgment and everyday reasoning.

I have fine straight hair, I don't use heat, use coconut oil on my ends, avoid tight hairstyles. And they still fry up.

Granted I used to wear tight hairstyles and had periods where I neglected oiling or care, so this could be leftover damage, but I have always had a problem with split ends.

Any suggestions/treatments (not trimming, I already do that) greatly appreciated.

It's like, "what we're all doing is bad, but if we all just do a bit *less* of it then everything will be fine!" It dilutes the climate crisis into some cute little jingle of "everyone do their part". Is using a reusable bag or turning off the lights in the other room going to clean up the oceans or keep us at 1.5C? I don't think so.

Not to say individual choices don't matter. But they should be emphasized on a much larger scale, like "what environmental policies do you support" and even whether someone does community/volunteer work to improve local conditions or fight for change. Carbon footprint is too passive.

"Kale, can you cover my bus fare? I only have $3 in my bank account."