Hi guys, I had to drop in this evening and talk (rant) about something I’m considering. As you can tell from the title, I’ve been considering making a change to my natural hair. I’ve been natural for about five and a half years now, and for the most part, it’s been a fun experience. I rocked a TWA, but it was short-lived since I wanted to grow my hair out. I learned how to do cornrows on myself, and have done countless braided, twisted, and crocheted styles over the years. I would say that I have mostly 4C hair. My hair is not all one hair type. It’s mainly 4C in the back, and mainly 4A in the crown and near the front. Lately though, it’s been
feeling like it’s 4D, E, F and G. I have had THE MOST difficult time managing my hair. It seems like the longer it’s gotten, the more I’ve had to experiment with finding a good routine and making it manageable for me and my life. Because let’s face it, a routine really isn’t a ‘routine’ if it’s not done regularly.
I’ve changed every. single. product that I’ve been using – from shampoo to conditioner to leave-in-conditioner to deep conditioner to hair oil….. I’m exhausted. And my hair doesn’t seem to be doing any better. I started doing different protective styles and really leaving my hair alone, doing nothing other than making sure it was moisturized and my scalp was clean. My hair felt softer, that was a big change that I was happy to see, but it was still SO MUCH HARDER to detangle. Can someone explain that to me please?? I started losing handfuls of hair in the detangling process. Wash day was never really a day-long ordeal for me, but it slowly started to take me all day to detangle, wash, condition, and prep my hair for stretching. Now, certain protective styles in themselves will take all day to do – small to medium box braids or twists especially – but I’m saying detangling, washing, conditioning, and putting my hair into 8 large twists to stretch and dry it was starting to take HOURS. And this is just the prep work for a protective style, not the actual styling itself which, like I mentioned, takes hours in itself.
This is something that I wasn’t used to. The routine that I had going into this year took me 2-3 hours tops, certainly not the better part of a day, but then the process started taking longer and longer, especially detangling. So, I started switching out products and moisturizing more often in hopes of getting my hair to a better state. But, three days ago, it took me 4 hours just to detangle. My wash day was nowhere near the 2-3 hours it used to take, and let me tell you, I still haven’t washed my hair yet… I was so frustrated and had so much housework that had piled up after a long work week that simply chose not to wash my hair until I was ready to tackle it later.
But, later that day, I came to the conclusion that maybe what I needed was to go back to chemically treating my hair to make it more manageable. I mean, it worked OK before, right? I’m a single Mom. I work about 50 hours a week in my day job. I’m managing a small side business. I simply do not have the time to spend all day just getting my hair detangled and washed. This is the best solution, right? So, I waited a few days to allow my scalp to rest, and bought a texture softener this morning.
I prepped my hair with oil, prepped my hairline with vaseline, mixed in the activator, set the timer. I was ready to go. I wrapped a towel around my shoulders, and you know what?
I couldn’t do it.
Because the reality is, I love being natural. I love that my hair is natural, and versatile, and I’m proud of the 5 years that I have in this journey so far. And the fact is, I’ve been in this journey long enough to know that when things get like this, my hair is trying to tell me something. There’s something that it needs that I haven’t given it. Now that I have a ‘clearer head’, I realize that I probably just need a trim. I’ve probably needed it for a long time, but I’ve just been too preoccupied to make the time for it. Split ends make the hair tangle upon itself more and can cause single strand knots….*enter detangling nightmare*. Once I trim my ends and do a good deep conditioning session, I’m betting that my hair will go back to the manageability that I’m used to.
So, tomorrow, I will take my time, trim my ends, and do my wash day. Sometimes, my hair ticks me awff! (yes, I meant to do that because ‘off’ isn’t strong enough) When that happens, I literally can’t deal with it because I know I’ll end up damaging it more than I otherwise would because I’d just be rushing to be done dealing with it. What I also know is that I don’t want to put chemicals into my hair again. I’d rather cut my hair and start over again from bald than chemically treat it again.
I’ll pay more attention to my hair moving forward. It ticks me off sometimes, but that’s OK.
Jan's Life 