Hair like Sadness: A Conceit to Mimic

I shifted through at least ten stories before "Hair like Sadness" by Patrick Rosal caught my eye.

Although I strive not to choose a piece of literature based on its title (since I'm quite prone to obscure titles that only make sense once the piece is read), it was most definitely the title Rosal chose that peaked my interest. Such a straightforward summary of his conceit was intriguing. All of my life my hair has been my most complimented feature. The dead cells that make up a tiny portion of my appearance has attracted the most praise consistently, but the upkeep and care required for it makes for a love-hate relationship, which is probably why Rosal's title caught my attention.

The voice of his piece is immediately evident in his title, and only further compounded by the first item in his list. I find his ability to take an aspect of humans that is highly praised as an indicator of beauty and turn it into an indicator of somberness is extremely admirable.I would love to employ that device in my writing, especially now that I've read this piece because Rosal's use of two long lasting conditions really struck me.

As much as his use of conceit was effective, the universality of his writing is really what struck me. He doesn't dance around the metaphor, but he uses such everyday descriptions that it's easy to inject your own vice into his similes. "My sadness is like my brother’s hair. It grows past my shoulders... it grows and grows. People have gotten to know me from blocks away by the way it grows.I spent years shaving it off... I can never completely rid myself of it,". Even though Rosal names his affliction as sadness, while I read I naturally replaced his sadness with my own struggle. At the height of my recovery from trauma, the urge to cut off my hair followed me everywhere; there was no escape from the shadow of PTSD and the effect its demons had on me are what people came to view me as. Cutting off my hair was a constant urge, a need to physically purge myself of everything that had been involved in my trauma. Here he addresses his hair as a metaphor, a symbol, but I experienced it as a reality.

The extent to which he was able to identify with me through a style of writing I typically wouldn't take is astounding. My writing tends to convey messages through round about ways that take some interpreting, and I put my experiences into characters and long, convoluted plots to get to a devastating catharsis. Royal did the opposite. His article settles in simplicity and consequently resonates so effectively and easily with his audience; my writing could very much benefit from a step back from complexity.

Rosal, Patrick. "Hair Like Sadness." Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

Brevity, 12 Apr. 2012. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.

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