A little background about me and my hair. I'm ALWAYS changing it. I get bored rather quickly and I'm also impatient. Two things you cannot be when starting locs. When I first told people I was getting locs, I got reactions from laughs, side eyes and even bets to see how long it'd last lol. Well..contrary to what most of them thought, I was up to that challenge, or so I thought. I have been natural for almost 5 years now and I believe I'd tried just about every style there was; so I was ready to move on. I was bored with twist outs and buns, the tapered cut (that grew out ) the big afro, etc. and I started off with the big chop so I had the TWA too. Locing really came about by chance, I'll say because I had always thought about it, but just never felt sure enough if I was ready. I knew it was a permanent thing and it was going to take alot of patience. My youngest daughter embarked on her journey to locing in June and I decided to go along with her, hence starting my own. I was really really excited. A lot of things emotionally were happening in my life and I felt I was ready to be constant with my hair..and I was. I did not like them when I first got them; I started out with the comb coils method, but I got as creative as I could with styling as much as I could. I persevered and before I knew it, I saw budding and length! I was getting excited!! I even was able to get pin up styles by my birthday! So what happened??.... Well in all honesty, I got impatient. I kept seeing what I wanted my hair to look like (my goal was to have a bun by the summer) and crazy as it may seem, I just couldn't take it anymore. My stylist had to reschedule my appointment, and my hair had already started itching like crazy; I really didn't know WHEN I was going to get my hair done again. With my loose natural hair, I could maintain that myself; wash it when I wanted to etc. Now I was set on someone else doing my hair, it drove me crazy so maybe out of boredom ( we were in the middle of the blizzard) I combed them out. Even as I was doing it, I kept saying WHY AM I DOING THIS?? I even got a little emotional and I kept psyching myself up looking at pics of my loose natural hair saying yeah, I'm going back...making all these excuses of why I missed my hair. Yeah ok. After about a day to comb them out, I knew I had made a mistake, but what was I gonna do now? So... I sucked it up; went BACK to Target and brought some hair products (something I loved not doing having locs) and twisted my hair. I got all the reactions from everybody, " I knew it wasn't gonna last, I should've bet you, Why?!, What is wrong with you, you don't know what you wanna do to your hair, etc.) But I was prepared for it all. So I told myself, that this was it, I'm happy with my loose hair. Again, yeah ok. I made an appointment to get it straightened just to see how much growth I'd had in the five months of being loc'ed. After I got it done, I literally hated it. I felt like it wasn't me, I looked "older" and I just could not identify with that anymore. Well.. needless to say; against all the naysayers and myself, I'm going back. I will be getting it redone in another week ( my stylist thinks I'm crazy) but I will stick it out this time. There are certain stages in loc'ing that are referred to as the "ugly or the in-between" phase. I was actually at that point, and that's really what did it for me. I felt ugly, unattractive at times, and I'll be honest, I knew that was just my mind bending towards what society has said looks "good". Well, let me tell you, whether anybody believes it or not, I'm going through the fire this time. I'm sticking it out because I know what the outcome will be. I honestly believe that this is teaching me something about myself; about patience and life too. You wont understand unless you've been there and it may sound silly that I'm using my hair as a learning tool, but preparation and growth can come from different areas of life; it just so happens that this go round for me, it's my hair. Stay tuned!
Here are some pics of my hair, I'll call this my first set of locs! :-)
From my birthday in November (it was really cute, sigh)
Right before I combed them out.. See I had length :-(
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