Natural hair
My hair has been natural for about a year and a half. Way back when I was in elementary school my hair was curly and long: natural. It was without products but leave in conditioner and conditioning grease. Then the day before starting 6th grade my mother insisted I get a relaxer. She claimed my hair began to fall out. Which made no sense because a perm would cause me to lose more hair, but I think she just wanted to give me a relaxer, so she gave whatever reason to do what she wanted. I begged her not to put those dreadful chemicals in my hair and everyone else tried to talk her out of it. But being the stubborn and headstrong woman she is, she ignored my request and proceeded to slab on the relaxer. From 6th grade to the summer before my senior year in high school I was addicted to the “creamy crack” (relaxer).
By the summer before senior year my hair was breaking more and so I thought to myself “I don’t want to relax my hair anymore, and who will do my hair for me when I go off to school?” Maintaining a relaxer is too much work, it involves touch-ups on my roots every couple months, whenever I wash my hair I have to set it and sit under a hot dryer for an hour, and wrap it at night. I was not up for all of that. And so I began growing the relaxer out.
By January my new growth was about 3 to maybe 5 inches long and so I did the big CUT. I chopped all of my relaxed ends off and had a mini curly fro. It was the start of the New Year and new hair. I went back to school with my baby fro and my English teacher looked at me and exclaimed “you are bold”.
Cutting my hair was like coming of age for me. I cut my hair, and felt independent. I felt like “I did what I wanted with my hair, and my mother could not deny me this” And now my hair has grown and I love it.
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