Liberation. Amen.
Originally published at Blogging America. Please leave any comments there.
I’ve finally had enough.
I determined this yesterday while battling with my hair in the shower - there was still some chemically treated relaxed hair matting together with and suffocating the new growth underneath. It was painful, and time-consuming, and incredibly annoying and just not worth it anymore. At 3 pm today I walked into a salon at the mall with my horrible mess of a head. Within 45 minutes I left looking drastically different and feeling drastically better. I felt so relieved, and happy, and just liberated that I went ahead and gave the hairstylist a 50% tip.
My hair is practically all gone, save for an extremely short, not even a half-inch, afro. All of the dead, damaged, and matted hair is in some trash somewhere and good riddance, I say. Because tonight when I go to bed I can just go to bed. I can spray some leave-in conditioner and quickly wrap up my head if I want to do more - a process that will take all of three minutes, at most.
When I wake up tomorrow I can take a shower without having to dig around for my shower cap first (I’m always misplacing it). To shampoo and condition my hair will only take about - again, at most - five minutes. When I get out of the shower I only need to take a wide-toothed comb-pick and just pick through my hair a couple of times, and then I’m done. I’m done. That’s it. I can go about the rest of my day not worrying about the state and looks of my hair because I know it’s healthy.
And in my opinion, that’s the best kind of style to have.