I Think My Hair Hates Me

My hair and I have an on-again-off-again-love-hate relationship. Right now we are in a fragile state. I am a bit raw and emotional from having stayed up until after four in the morning to unbraid my hair. And my hair is fearfully aggressive like a stray cat. It’s like this every time. Once it’s time for the braids to come out, my hair and I have to navigate through all the steps of grief.

Denial: I pretend that I don’t have to take out the braids. I willfully ignore how fuzzy my roots are getting. I tell myself it’s okay to wait another week or so.

Anger: Once the unbraiding begins (usually a two-part-two-day process), I begin to resent my hair. I start wanting to do violent things to it like shave it off. Each tangle I encounter, each labored pull of the comb makes me curse my kinks and sigh with nearly defeated exasperation. I hate, hate, hate how hard my hair can be to manage — especially when it first comes out of it’s braided hibernation. That really is what the braids are, a way for me to make the beast sleep. But the price I pay is that every three months or so, the beast must be roused. And it wakes up cranky and determined to take at least one prisoner.

Bargaining: I start to dream about getting dreadlocks. Then I’d never have to put a comb to my head again. Maybe I could get a perm again. So what if the last time I got a perm the resulting chemical burn left me with a bald spot? So what if that “bald” spot has never been the same (the hair there is still shorter and more brittle)? So what if “the spot”…