Curly hair, still care

After an 8-hour day, washing off the stench of work, feeding my children, and doing some minor housekeeping, I am finally sitting down snuggled up on the couch with my little girl, while my teenager is in her room likely talking to her friends. I don’t feel all that great and my body hurts. My monthly visitor is coming for her scheduled visit, and she is wreaking havoc on my body but mostly me emotional well-being. Lately, when she is coming, I lose my grip on my emotions and it can be utterly devastating. It’s worse than it ever has been so all I can attribute it to is that I’m getting old, and my hormones are slowly but surely taking hold of my ability to be a rational, sane, human. So tonight I write.

I have been thinking a lot about the notion of being perfect and where self-love fits into that line of thinking. More importantly, I am thinking about how that has affected me. Since I can remember my mom has hated her hair. My mom has curly hair and it’s that tight curl that can be difficult to manage but it is her hair, and she absolutely does everything she can to rid herself of the curl. Since I can remember, I have straightened my hair. I was born with curly hair and while my curl is nothing like my mother’s and most people think it is beautiful it is curly nonetheless and I too hate it. I have used simple blow dryers, straighteners, chemicals, non-chemicals, all to tame the curl. As I got cleaned up this evening and I am realizing how tired my body is I realized how much easier it would be if I could just throw product in my hair and let it be. I am not going anywhere, and my body could really use a break and rather than attend to that need, I dried my hair.

I don’t know when I began to dry my hair, I think sometime around the age of 13 and it is truly the rare occasion that I will let it go. But I was thinking about the why behind it. I suppose that my mom’s hate for her hair caused me to hate my curly hair as well. But I also believe that where I grew up and who I grew up around had a lot to do with shaping my choice to not accept the hair that I had been born with. I went to school with people that had pin straight hair. Smooth, silky, hair that looked perfect always. I perceived those girls as the popular girls, the girls that everyone liked. They looked well put together, not one frizzy or misplaced hair. The girls with curly hair were the ones made fun of the ones people didn’t include. I suppose that I have always sought out inclusion. I had buck teeth, with a huge gap. I wore my hair in a side ponytail for the longest time if my dad did it or if my mom did my hair, it was half up, half down, and frizzy as hell. I changed a lot at 13, changed my hair, became a gym rat, and got braces. All of those changes impacted areas of my life for the good and so I nurtured those parts of me that yielded acceptance.

Within my group of friends, I was liked enough but I don’t think I was ever really in the “in crowd’ in the ways I had wanted. My parents weren’t rich enough, I didn’t wear the right clothes outside of my school uniform, and while I played all types of sports throughout my academic career, I was not a master of any. I was a good student. Always achieving honors and that came naturally to me. Didn’t have to study much to get that level of success. When I left the high school setting and the confines of my house, I no longer had that natural ability, and I didn’t have the mental capacity to focus on my grades. My college years could be their own novel but what I learned is that college represented freedom. The shackles had been unlocked when I went to school, and I lost control of myself. I lost control of myself for a long time. I tasted parts of life that I never imagined I would have. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll in ways that when I look back, I can’t believe that was me. But it was and while I am not proud of my actions, I learned a lot and got on the straight and narrow and took my life in my own hands. I moved off campus, I got my own car, my own apartment, and I got my first job. I began my path of success and the more I did to secure my identity the more praise I got from my parents. And that started years of doing everything I could to outpace my siblings. To be the one to do the first of everything, got my first home first, better paying job then both of them at the time, college graduate, until I no longer could keep up with that. My sister took the spotlight. The doctor, the virgin, the goody two shoes. Now don’t let me fool you, I love my sister with all my heart and our relationship had always been strong, but my mother focused on her in ways she never did with me and definitely not my brother. One day I will unpack all of that but right now that is way too much for the time of night.

While this all began with curly versus straight hair, I realized that most of my life has never been about living how I wanted. The times that I lived for me I didn’t make the best choices in terms of drugs, alcohol, school, and even relationship choices so I definitely needed balance that I didn’t possess back then but what I realized is that during those rebellious years, I was living my best life even if I wasn’t making the best choices, but the choices were mine. Once I approached life as a competition for who could snag moms love, I abandoned myself. I suppose I have been abandoning myself my whole life, makes sense since I never really have seen my value but what I am beginning to realize is that my value isn’t measured by how much money I make, how I wear my hair, or even what I look like, what brings value to me is my humility, being a good person, loving others with my whole self no matter what. I took some ugly missteps this last year and a half. I didn’t show up as my best self for me or for those I love. I am starting from the bottom again and while it is scary as hell, I am committed to rebuilding from a place of love, the rest doesn’t matter.