The New Year’s day before last, I shaved my head. The whole thing, right down to the skin. I did it for a variety of reasons — some magical, most mundane. Now, after a year (and change), how does it feel?

I’ve gotta be honest, I don’t regret it. I only regret not having done it sooner.

I don’t keep my hair as (non-existently) short as that first cut. Most of the time, it hovers between a #3 and a #5. I’ve debated allowing it to grow out again, but, every time, I hit about an inch in length and get the urge to buzz it again.

It was a little tough to get used to, at first. I’ve almost always had very long hair. It was part of how I mentally pictured myself. Even in dreams, I had long hair. A big part of why I cut it was trichotillomania — after two decades of feeling through my hair, looking for all of the strands that were too thick, to coarse, too curly, or otherwise too different, and then pulling them out, I was ready to stop. I also knew I didn’t want to go the route of buying hair fiber sprays or putting in expensive extensions that’d only end up damaging what hair I had left. Unfortunately, like a lot of things on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, it’s not that easy to just up and quit trich. Buzzing it short removes not only the temptation, but the ability to grasp hairs and pull them. As a “fix,” it’s a bit hardcore… but it works.

Sometimes I struggle with the idea of keeping my hair short. Most of the people — men, women, or otherwise — who informed my standard of beauty growing up had long hair. The typical image of the witch in popular imagination is a woman with long, wild hair. Some spells even call for unbinding and shaking out hair, using hair as a taglock, braiding hair together with other objects, or wearing items in hair. Some traditions call for keeping hair bound or covered. I have never been a part of one that did, but I kept my hair bound anyway — I shed like a golden retriever, so it helped keep my hair off of things. (It also helped keep it out of other people’s hands. No sense in giving someone an easy way to focus a jinx on you, you know?)

On the flip side, a large component of magic is embracing change and releasing what no longer serves you. Honoring sunk costs or holding on to things that do nothing for you only serves as an energy sink that detracts from your ability to grow, create, and bring in things that don’t suck the joy out of living. With that in mind, and considering how much mental energy it took to go through the hair-pulling process, obsess about it afterward, try to hide the evidence, and keep my hair in decent shape, I don’t at all regret shaving it.

Will I let my hair grow out again? I don’t think so. I like how it looks short. I love how little care it requires. I like that I can make bars of shampoo last much longer now. I love that I never have to worry about it being dull, or limp, or frizzy, or unmanageable. Not having long hair has taken a tremendous load off of me.

Strangely enough for someone who’s had long hair pretty much her whole life, I feel more like myself with little-to-no hair at all.