Origin Story
9th grade, class is dismissed, and it’s the end of the day. I go to my locker to pack up my backpack, I bend over, with a parade of kids behind me walking to their buses. I feel something hit my head, nothing hard, but I reach and feel to the top of my head. I feel something sticky, realize it’s someone’s gum.
I turn around to see who did it and I see a boy looking at me with his friends, smiling and laughing like they just saw the funniest thing ever. My heart sinks to my stomach, and my eyes fill up with tears. I’m mad, embarrassed, sad, confused. I look around for a friend, familiar face, or someone who saw what happened, but I didn’t see anyone. I got up and walked down the hallway to my favorite teacher’s classroom, but she was still with her class, so I decided to just walk to the bus. I cried from the moment I left her classroom, to the moment I got home. Luckily, I was able to get the gum out with peanut butter (of all things) and managed to not have to cut my hair. At this time in my life, I had been growing my hair out. I was a really shy kid and got picked on a lot, so I had a tendency to hide behind my long hair, it was a sort of refuge for me, as well as a way for me to outwardly express myself.
Get Dylan Chartier’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
My hair was and still is a main source of my identity. When we think about ourselves and our identities, we all can probably identify certain aspects of ourselves that we hold dear. This gum incident was the spark of a difficult four years in high school. Ultimately, it led me to working a lot on my self image and confidence. After graduating high school I went to beauty school and got my license to do hair. At the time I thought I just really enjoyed doing hair and makeup, but I think that maybe subconsciously, this gum incident may have been the spark for my inspiration to go down that path.
On the surface it sounds pretty simple, but it’s a lot deeper than just wanting to make people look pretty. Having felt so outcast in high school, I found an outlet to express myself through my hair and it was a major part of my journey to becoming the person I am today. Three years ago I decided I no longer wanted to do hair, I felt like I wanted to do more than make people look good and feel good because of it. I spent so much of my time behind the chair just talking to my clients, listening to them. A lot of them would open up to me about very personal things, looking for a supportive voice, and this was the part of my job that I really loved and connected with. I made the decision to go college with the intention of studying psychology, ultimately becoming some kind of therapist or counselor.
It’s wild to think about how certain moments in our life can shape us into the people we are today. Life is full of ups and downs, moments that challenge us and push us to our limits, and other moments that are just filled with happiness. But when we take those challenging moments of life and use them as sources of inspiration to bring us happiness, that’s something that is truly beautiful.
