I’ve decided to “go natural.”
Not for noble reasons like preservation of my hair health or anything. This decision has been gradual and drawn out and was almost entirely born of laziness. I hated the 5 hour process of washing, conditioning, blow-drying and straightening my hair and even more, I was terrified my luck would run out and I’d encounter a bad batch. Every time I would relax my hair I’d tug at it in paranoia, thinking, “today is the day my nightmare begins. My bald horror story.”
I’m one of the lucky ones. As a black female, it’s an age old story, “perming” or “relaxing” ones hair. The epilogue of said story is “my baby lost all her hair, look at these pictures, look at her bald spots.” For all my years of relaxing, I’ve been blessed enough to maintain thick, healthy hair. But then there was an incident with my sister and then my mom. They got a “bad batch” and their hair broke off by the handful.
I do not have the jawline for a pixie cut.
Like I said, the decision has been gradual. I’ve only relaxed my hair 3 or 4 times in the past three years, so I figure, why not just take the plunge? It’d be just my luck that I decide “one more relaxer won’t hurt” and I end up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor with a fistful of my hair in my hand and a belly full of what ifs.
I’m not going to start a blog or a YouTube channel about any of this (nobody would watch that anyway). I’m not going to take pictures of my “journey” or do a “big chop” (that’s where you cut off the relaxed hair and basically start over). I’m not brave or anything, I’m just lazy and paranoid. Besides, I can barely afford toilet paper–a good relaxer is like, 8 bucks.
Janelle Collins 