nobody likes a sad bieber

Perhaps there is no flavor of existential despair so bitter and so deeply felt as the kind you experience when you’re unhappy with your haircut.

I say this as someone who is intimate with pretty much every iteration of ED. I know all too well the subtle shades of emotional crisis that distinguish, say, the Regrettable Text Message variety from the Ill-Advised Tryst type. (If we had all day, I could outline the full spectrum of romantic trauma-related ED, which stretches all the way from plain old bad decisions to Projectile Vomiting in Public.)

What am I doing?

It's sort of like the difference between the specific shade of despair I feel after a reality television binge versus the one I get from reading the news.

Why are we here?

But it wasn’t until yesterday, when I received a Locks of Love-grade nightmare haircut that robbed me of some 12 inches of hair, that I truly understood the power of Bad Haircut ED.

Who am I? Really?

I thought I had a plan. It was a plan that included a folder of celebrity photographs that I printed up special, even though it made me feel like a stalker. My stylist pretended to look at the pictures, then cut-cut-cut until all that remained was this sort of sad hair helmet. As she worked, I tried to distract myself from my growing horror by focusing on not throwing up. I turned a rather alarming shade of purple from the effort, but I really thought it was working until she said she was finished. That was when I started to weep like an unstable lady on a makeover show.

Mortified, I excused myself to the bathroom, where I cried bitter tears for 15 minutes or so until I came to the horrible realization that, at some point, I was going to have to leave. I fluffed my helmet and drank about a gallon of sink water before coming out like nothing was wrong, la la la. The final blow came when my stylist asked if I wanted to keep my folder of stalker pics. Somehow this insult was the gravest of all. I mustered my dignity and asked her to recommend a styling product that would make me look less like a lesbian.

I had made plans to meet the members of one of my imaginary bands around the corner for pizza, so I was forced to debut the new look immediately.

“Oh, wow, you really went for it,” said the ukulele player.

The sink water churned.

“It will be fine,” said the fiddler. “It’s already almost fine.”

It was not almost fine.

At that point, the suicidal ideation was pretty intense. I wanted nothing so much as to sit in a dark corner and rock if off. Instead, I sulked like a brat and got really drunk. Which was all well and good at the time, but less than ideal this morning, when I rolled out of bed looking like undead Justin Bieber.

I mean, it’s hair. I know it’s going to grow back, so I’m keeping my chin held high. If there’s anything worse than looking like Bieber, it’s looking like a sad Bieber. Mama always told me that nobody likes a sad Bieber.