Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The Big Chop

So there I was at the salon waiting to get my hair done.  Now remember, I had literal bald areas in my head so I was nervous this new stylist would take one look at my hair and send me packing.  As she walked into the room and greeted me with a wide smile, I warned her about the sorry state of affairs hiding under my ball cap.  She smiled and said, "don't worry, not much scares me".  Then I took of my cap.  I must admit, she was a PROFESSIONAL, she did not say a word about what she saw, how bad it looked.  She said simply, "I've seen worse."

Then she asked me what my goal for my hair was, so I told her I just wanted my hair to be as healthy as possible, that I planned to transition.  No more relaxer for me, I needed to have my hair bounce back to it's healthy state...a natural state.  Then she made a CRAZY suggestion...to cut it all off!  What???!!!  Cut it all off???  As in ALL OFF??!!!  Now I really liked this stylist, she was cool as a cucumber.  She explained that my hair had been so overprocessed for so long there was nothing that could save it but to cut it off.  She throughly examined my head and stated there were no "bald" spots but rather areas that had broken off to the scalp.  What's the difference you might ask?  It means the follicles were not damaged...yet.  So long as the follicles were not damaged, I could re-grow my hair.  She further explained that cutting off the damaged, over-processed ends would give me a better chance at re-growing stronger, healthier hair.  Then she let me marinate on this information for a bit.

So I made the decision to cut off my hair, to the roots as in all of it.  I cried like a baby....tears of anger, frustration.  My one lingering question as she took her shears to my hair...what will my hubby say??  When it was all over...I was left with less than an inch of hair on my head, and so a new adventure begins...

Thursday, February 10, 2011

How did this happen?

I was sick and tired, frustrated and a little bit angry but mostly...worried.  What the heck is going on with my hair??  Why won't my precious strands just stay on my head???  Why. Won't. It. GROW???!!  It was horribly depressing but this low point in my hair life is what has brought me to this new, exciting, sometimes unnerving journey.

I am in my mid-thirties and I simply cannot recall what my hair looks like in it's natural state.  I believe my first relaxer was at about age 10.  I was in standard 5 (or fifth grade-the US equivalent) and I remember going to school with a head full of beautiful, brown, bouncy curls.  I just knew I was Miss Thang!  I was born in Trinidad, a beautiful country in the Caribbean and my mom I guess just got tired of having to tackle both my and my sister's hair every Sunday.  Trust me, it was no picnic for me either.  You see, my hair back then was long, thick and unruly.  It took my mom a whole lot of time to try to tame my naps add to that I had the AUDACITY to be tender-headed.  I didn't look forward to Sundays after lunch, it just meant pain for me and exhaustion for my mom.

So she made the decision to relax my naps away.  I loved it, she loved it, my whole family (I suppose) loved it.  She took me to my aunt's salon and the rest is history.  Fast forward a few years later to the present and my hair struggles was just that....a struggle.  I was in this horrible, abusive cycle of hair grows a teeny bit, hair breaks off a whole lot.  No matter how many hair, skin and nails vitamins I took, no matter how many deep conditions, no matter what I did, I just could not keep my hair on my head.  What used to be a big, thick, voluminous mass on my head was now a limp, scraggly, patchy mess.  So what did I do?  Weaved that bad boy up!!

So for years I rocked various weaves, shoulder length, mid-back length, curly, wavy, bone straight but the hair that grew out of my scalp just continued to suffer.  One day, while getting ready to head out on the town with my hubby, I parted my tracks to reveal...nothing!  No hair!  All gone!!  The "part" between my tracks had become about twice the width of a cornrow!!  WTH??  My hairline, the inside of my hair, the back of my head-just bald patches everywhere.  I quietly wept.

I went to my hairstylist who just shook her head, and said "everyone's hair grows in a weave except yours!"  Then she simply relaxed my hair, deep conditioned and slapped that weave right back in because now I didn't have any hair at all to just stop wearing the weaves.  My hair was uneven in every possible spot, it just didn't make sense what was happening to me.  I researched vitamin deficiency, female pattern baldness, traction alopecia, stress all to try to determine why my hair just kept falling out in clumps.  You may ask, "did it ever occur to you to just stop relaxing your hair?"  The answer to that question is a resounding "YES" but I simply was not strong enough.

Remember that thick, luxurious, untameable hair I was talking about earlier that I remember from my childhood?  Well I also remember several family members saying things like "you have bad hair", "where'd you get that hair?!", "humph, you got your daddy's family hair, not our hair", "girl you have to fix those grains at the back of your head".  In other words, I grew up believing I have "bad hair", the type of hair you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy...well maybe your very worst. :-)  I was taught to believe I could only be pretty if my hair was bone straight, nevermind it was also dull, limp and lifeless.  I couldn't sweat, swim or get caught in the rain.  I didn't have "wash and go" hair.  So that meant, I would have relax my hair until Jesus called me home.  Not relaxing my hair was simply not an option and I would just have to live with the damage and maybe the three strands of hair left on my head.

My "hair psychosis" as I refer to it, was so deep that upon learning I would be having a girl 5 1/2 years ago, I prayed fervently to my Heavenly Father that my baby girl would not have my hair.  That she would instead have the type of hair that bounces.  The type of hair that while curly is still silky, that she would not have to worry about those buckshots in her kitchen, that she would be beautiful.  Yes, I am ashamed at these thoughts and I was ashamed back then when I had them but it didn't stop me from praying every single day until my first contraction.  Aftert her birth, I counted her fingers, toes, eyes, ears, marveled at her beauty and thanked God for answering my prayers...my baby had "good hair".  Yup, I have issues!

My sister is a natural beauty, literally.  She is beautiful AND she is natural and has worn her hair in it's natural state for about 10 years.  She has always tried to convince me to "go natural" but I resisted as though she was offering me poisoned fruit.  My response to her was always the same, "my hair is too bad to be go natural" then she would just kind of give me a look that said "there's something wrong with you" and we'd go about our day.  Then one day I had the bright idea to simply change stylists.  The stylist I had was also my aunt who'd been doing my hair since I was a child.  My decision to change stylists was not an easy one but a necessary one as I hadn't been happy with my hair at her hands for months if not years.  My hubby certainly was not happy either but he left the decision to make the change up to me (though he did not remain quiet on the topic).  So a friend of mine recommended someone and I simply went to the salon to let her do my 'do.

What happened next?  Check out my next installment...