Moe, Larry, and NOT Curly (You like this title, don't you?)

*Disclaimer for the suckas: This ish is far deeper than I thought. I'm walking around here understanding that NOTHING is on the surface. There is always an underlying, hardcore foundation for everything. I tried to put it into words but sometimes the spirit says, "Nah. Let 'em eat cake."


*Sigh*

My hair is on my nerves. Again. But this time, it is NOT curly. It is wavy. It is kinda straight in some places. But it is NOT curly. It is NOT curly.

Nope.

Number one on my list of regrets is not wearing my hair curly to my 20-year high school reunion last month. Now, I know some of you are thinking, "Damn! Really? You don't regret not ever seeing the Taj Mahal or spending a summer studying abroad or going to a Michael Jackson concert before he died? You regret wearing your hair straight? Ain't that some bull?"

No, my friend. It is not bull. At all. See, this regret serves as a deep, meaningful, red-flag symbol that allows all of the other regrets to happen, whether past, present, or future. It's true. It's deep.

Here's why:

I figured out that my hair is curly when I was 33 years old. Thirty. Three. I have had my hair pressed, flat-ironed, or relaxed for as long as I can remember. I get why. My mother has fine-textured hair that reached her waist when she met my dad. I popped out with hair that most likely was easier to deal with if it were straightened. It used to be pretty thick and long and wild. I get it. I definitely get it. I just didn't know that a lack of heat and chemical treatments would show that I have curly hair. It was pretty exciting to discover it; daunting and exhausting, though, to try out products and all that biz. Hey...anyone who tells you that working with your natural hair pattern is less work is LYING. LY. ING. They are. Don't let 'em fool you, man.

It took me 3 years to allow my hair to follow its natural curl pattern. 3 years of braids, products, twists, and afro puffs. 3 whole years. My cousin introduced me to Kinky Curly and that was it! Wow! My hair can do THAT? Awesome. What I know for sure is that there is something to be said for discovering an aspect of yourself that has never been unearthed before, or you've long been detached from. It also is an effin' mind-trip to see yourself in a different hair light, not just for you but for those around you. I find that most people have adapted and love it; there are quite a few (close family members, to be exact...TOO, TOO close family members) who loooooove to play Memory Lane and whip out my college graduation photo or high school pics and praise the heavens for what was once, to them, a beautiful mane. A mane that used to regularly get stroked by strangers, had been bumper-curled, wrapped, and played with, and regularly was referred to as a weave (haters!!).

Le sigh.

Anyway, save for a couple of key events, I haven't straightened my hair regularly in 7 years. Hell, I didn't even wear my hair straight on my wedding day. As a matter-of-fact, my wedding day proved to me that I was finally comfortable in my own skin, steady in my convictions, and really understood who I was. I actually heard terms I had rarely ever heard used to describe me on this day: "stunning", "beautiful", "glowing"...I don't get these much. I'm not the cutest or most spectacular woman who enters a room. I actually have to open my mouth and let the goodness that is Dawnnesha show folks that I am good shit. But I digress. Or do I? I mean, the whole point is that I finally felt like 360 degrees of full self on my wedding day: unapologetic, undeniable, unchartered, and damn sure about what I wanted to represent for myself.  Enter braided updo with a natural (i.e., no hairpiece) puff. I was cool with that, and I was cool with the way everyone wanted to represent themselves that day. No judgment, no denying, and no restrictions. My simple motto was: "Just make sure your Chucks are clean, dawg. That's all I ask."

Fast forward to October and so began the year from hell. Our son was going through what he was going through, so that meant we were all going through it, too. Christmas was hard and depressing for some strange reason. I overextended myself beyond belief, played Super-bad-ass-woman far too greatly at both work and home. My hair stayed in a puff or bun for almost a year. I'm not kidding. All I did for the year was wash it, gel it mercilessly, and put it up. Goodbye, remainder-of-my-hairline. Hello, split ends, dry scalp, dry ends, lifeless, dull, getting-older-lady-anyway piece of hair. My hair is a shadow of its former self, for sure. A year of pure neglect, depression, and stress will do that like a mo-fo.

So summer of 2013 approaches. I know the reunion is coming and I'm sick of my hair. I need professional help. I know this. The last time a "professional" touched my hair, though, was in 2011 and she was determined to make my hair bone-straight. So much so that she burned my curl pattern at the top of my hair and I spent the next year-and-a-half regrowing it. I abhor letting anyone except my friends Vee and Stacey (Holla!) or my sis/cousin touch it. These lovelies live in California, though, so I just can't ship 'em to P-Town when I want 'em. In the meantime, I just twist my piece of hair all summer, further contributing to what is the mission to have no hair on my head, obviously. By the time August rolled around, my hair was a dry, graying, eighteen color bun with the texture of a tumbleweed.

How far from "Is that a weave?" grace I've fallen.

Friday. August 23rd, 2013. I have an appointment with my sis/cousin, who I trust with everything that is my hair. Here's a li'l disclaimer: This woman has been hookin' me up since, like, forever. Braids? Check. Flat twists? Check. Press and curl? Check. Color? Cut? Chiggidy check-check. Like, for real, and either for free or at a severely discounted rate (which is kinda' free). She asks me what I want; I tell her; she does it. In that order. Rarely do we ever deviate from that script.

Except on this day. And, boy, do I regret it. Goddamn.

I walk in and she tells me that I need color. Yeah. I know. She unwraps the bun and gasps. She is dumbfounded by the state of my hair since the year before (she hooked up my wedding 'do). I tell her I've treated it badly for 10 months. She agrees. She colors. She conditions. She washes. She blow-dries.

It needs a cut. Everyone with good sense knows that cutting black hair wet ain't the business. Or even kinda' possible, considering the shrinkage and all. My ish shrinks, like 75%. 75%!!!!!!! In about 10 minutes flat it shrinks this much and that's being kind.  She lets me know that she cannot cut it without straightening it and, goddammit, my hair needs some major choppage. The owner of the salon agrees. The braider co-signs it, and the new girl sits in her chair in front of me and nods with such passion that her joint is gon' come off her neck in a second.

Flat-ironing commences. Heat on thinning hair. Parting that used to take forever now is easy and brisk. What a humble reminder of how far my mane has come due to age, neglect, and abuse for almost a year. But I also just hated that moment. There is a reason I stopped straightening my hair and this was it. Reminders about sweating and edges and limited exercise (if I chose to do so!) and frequent appointments to keep it up and wrapping and oil and laying my shit down...I don't miss that ish. At all.

But I digress.

After 3 people consulted on how to best cut and layer my hair, my sis/cousin asked me what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to be curly again. But here's the clincher: I didn't feel THAT confident about it this time. See, there was that little thing called my 20 year high school reunion, and if there was any time that I SHOULD have been more confident, SHOULD have been more secure, SHOULD have been able to showcase who I was, this was the time to do it.

Wasn't it?

The thing is, the last year had thoroughly kicked my ass. Kicked. My. Ass. Like never before, my ass had been kicked. I had fought for my son's happiness and pulled him out of a wack-ass system not set up for him to succeed in. I had a helluva first year of marriage, with the hubs and I learning about one another all over again, as if the first 16 years were just a practice run. I was unhappy with my job, was too busy not pursuing my passions (dancing and writing), and I had begun to simply exist at an accelerated rate. That 20 year reunion meant I had to face all of that and present myself in a way that could be seen as fraudulent. Hell, maybe I WAS fraudulent. I don't even think I was believing my OWN hype at that point, in that chair, sitting face-to-face with the woman who had hooked me up in countless kitchens and bedrooms. When my cousin asked me "What do you want?", for the first time in our lives I didn't have an answer for her. This shit was bigger than my hair and I didn't know it until I started this bloggin' thing up again.

What DO I want?

She offered to make me curly again and I hesitated. First off, it wouldn't be curly-curly. It was now straight and smelled like a flat-iron; who knew what the hell would come of it being wet and product-laden. Second of all, the question was: Who did I want to present? What did I want to present? Looking back on that ish, the regret gives me knots in my stomach. See, I ended up having her give me that boring-ass "side part under" shit I used to always walk away with (see "The Game" Season 3 if you don't know 'bout that). I didn't feel more beautiful, I didn't feel great, I didn't feel like "my old self". I didn't feel edgy or unique or sure or ready.

I felt more fraudulent, more unsure, and very, very resentful.

It has nothing to do with straight hair versus curly/nappy/kinky/coily hair. That ain't the point. Rock yo' shit. Own yo' shit. Add to yo' shit, if you want to. I don't care. One isn't better than the other as far as YOU'RE concerned. Do YOU. This has nothing to do with my sis/cousin. This has nothing to do with what you may or may not be tryin' to make it about.

This has everything to do with me. If I can't make a straight decision about my hair now (no pun intended), who the eff am I? What the eff do I want? Why does how I present myself matter so much now, and why the eff did this reunion trip my ass up? I like ME, now. I rock ME, now. Why didn't I effin' go with THAT?

Here's the funny part: My indecision has everything to do with how I ignore my own feelings and voice (next blog post). True to form, my hair pattern is completely different: Burned at the top, just like in 2011, curly at the roots, and straight-to-wavy on the ends. It's wack and messed up and completely symbolic of what's going on inside of my too-old-for-this-BS mind.

I have played that weekend over and over in my head since I got back to Portland. I regret that I wasn't authentic. I regret that I didn't put my best self forward. I regret that I didn't speak up for myself in a way that I have before. I hate that I got my ass kicked so hard that I had to and still have to rebuild who I am and what I know about who I am. But you know what I regret the most? I regret that I'm even still questioning who that is.