Yes Chelsea, Part 3 (Patreon)

*Chelsea Richter, age 16

“Are you sure you can fix it?”
I was miserable and humiliated. I thought that cutting my hair short was going to upset my mom and allow me a sense of freedom and independence. But since I just pulled it back and had Violette cut it with a pair of scissors, it turned out uneven and stupid, leaving me no choice but to ask my mom for help with damage control. 


She teased me about it too and told me that that’s what I get for running off and having my friend cut my hair for me instead of asking her. I said I wasn’t going to come crawling back after a fight and she just did that thing where she rolled her eyes and started combing through my hair. I almost expected her to surprise me me by saying it wasn’t so bad really, and that she just needed to trim it a bit. Instead, she bitched at me for doing it in the first place and told me that I really fucked up my hair for no reason before asking why the hell I did that. I guess that’s what I get for trying to expect to be surprised.


I couldn’t very well tell her I did it to piss her off, so I just stuck to my story about letting Violette do it on a whim. She asked if we’d been drinking or something when it happened and I said no. I’m pretty sure she believed me enough to not punish me for it, but even so I feel like shit. 


I ended up with shorter hair than I wanted, but at least it looks kinda cute. My mom told me that I could glam it up with some makeup if I didn’t feel too happy with my look, claiming also that it wouldn’t kill me to add some color. Problem is, I never really took stock in makeup and turned mom down every time she offered to get me some. She let me test it out by putting some of her stuff on me. Not gonna lie, it actually turned out pretty cute. 


So now we’re going to the mall together tomorrow to do some fashion shopping. Clothes, makeup, my preppy mom, and her goth daughter.
I feel like Wednesday, but Enid’s my mom. Great.

*Olivia Richter, age 31

*Sigh*
“Yes, Chelsea. I’ll help you.”


So my daughter’s an idiot.
Not only did she throw a fit over me trying to bond with her and run out on me in the middle of our coffee date, she then walked for an hour and a half to get to her friend’s house where she allegedly asked her to cut half her hair off. Unfortunately, either her friend is also an idiot and can’t cut hair or she did it herself. Whatever really happened, they absolutely butchered it. It was uneven and cut at funky angles, which tells me that they were using shitty scissors that couldn’t cut through Chelsea’s thick and previously beautiful hair and likely had to do it bit by bit. I could tell where one handful was cut just by how uneven it was and how obvious the disparity was from one chunk to another. 


It looked so damn bad. She was pretty torn up about it too, which makes me think that she never thought this through and that her rather spurious decision to cut her hair short was just an attempt to spite me after I said the black looked really pretty on her. Honestly, I didn’t really care so much about that. I did the same shit to my mom, though I can’t help but wonder if I am really as bad as she was. 


When Chelsea did eventually come home, it was in tears. She told me that she couldn’t bring herself to ask for help after yelling at me, though….that’s exactly what she was doing by saying that. I agreed to help, but I was still kinda pissed about being treated the way I was. I’m still a person, not just a caregiver or soulless monster. I have the right to be pissed when my own child decides to treat me like shit when I’ve done nothing but my best to make her happy. Discipline is needed every once in a while. I never hit her at all, but a good bitcjing session tends to get the point across so long as I keep her engaged by allowing her to defend herself.


In the end, I ended up cutting it shorter than I needed to to fix it, but all in all we both think it turned out alright. I even got her to try some makeup that wasn’t just straight black. It was funny to me because the moment I brought it up, she told me that she doesn’t really use makeup. Which was hilarious to me because she wore eyeliner and dark lipstick like every day after she dyed her hair. Of course when I said this, she deflected by saying that lipstick and eyeliner isn’t really like “MAKEUP makeup” and had no answer when I was like…”How is it not?”


The following day, I was able to convince her to go to the mall with me and have a PROPER girl’s day out, and it went pretty well. We did the usual teen mall routine of going to Hot Topic then Spencer’s, then the food court, and after that I made sude to drag her into Victoria’s Secret and some of the stores I like. I bought her some outfits along with my own, and we even did the dressing room game where we rate each other’s looks before we decided which ones to take home. I don’t think she even realized how into it she was once she let her guard down a bit. 


I probably won’t tell her just yet. I am happy to enjoy our good day together like we used to do when she was little and maybe hope that this will be the beginning of us getting close again.