Monday, January 9, 2012

I Am My Hair

Sorry India Arie...

A few weeks ago, I awoke, quite dramatically, from what seemed to be a dreamless slumber. In my cakey-eyed stupor, however, one wild and desperate message resonated (very loudly) in my head...

You gotta get rid of that hair!!!

So wait, this may need a bit of a back story; just a bit though because I promised myself that this would be a quick post (yeah right).

About 10 years ago, I made a dramatic decision. I decided to cut off my long and beautiful dreadlocks; my "crown and glory" as the old ladies would say. The main reason? Vanity. They were so ridiculously heavy that my roots started thinning and I couldn't take it anymore. My reasoning?...it was just hair. I never looked back, but after the haircut, I did do something very deliberately yet, so retrospectively telling and... weird. I took the recently chopped locs from my barber, placed them in a plastic bag, carried them to my home in Brooklyn and tucked them away almost ritualistically in my closet.

OK so maybe some of you won't find this weird and I sure didn't up until that very second I was jolted out of my sleep. In fact, I often bragged about the fact that I still had my locs and not once did I feel weird about admitting it. Obviously I still don't, but it was the immediate thought process after receiving the message to "get rid of that hair", that bothered me; no, shamed me the most.

I wanted to kick myself. How could I be so blind and so stupid in fact to store and mentally hold on to something so absolutely dead as hair? Here's an even crazier level than the already psychotic behavior of storing old hair...I actually brought it with me when my girls and I moved from NYC to NJ. Really people!!! I took the time to pack up that dead hair (like some crazy black widow) and bring it right along with us into our new lives eight years ago...wow.

Back to my immediate thought process. "Gurl!" I said to myself. "Do you know what's in that hair??" Actually, I did know.  And the list went something like this:
  • That tumultuous relationship(s) is in that hair!
  • The times when you didn't have food to feed your babies are in that hair!
  • That awful boss is in that hair!
  • Your tears are in that hair!
  • Pounds upon pounds of fat you successfully worked off are in that hair!
  • Poverty is in that hair!
  • Ailments and pain are in that hair!
  • A era of spiritual loss is in that hair.
It was this thought process which prompted me to immediately jump out of my bed, grab the hair out of its eternally, undisturbed and quiet resting place in my closet, throw on my fleece and Uggs and race outta the house to the garbage bin in the garage and dump that damned bag of mess and stress. And how did it feel? It felt amazing! Freeing! And I suddenly felt much "lighter"; much like I did that day so long ago when those heavy tresses hit the ground.

And so for all you non-believers: Yes, maybe it all is...in my mind, and even so...hunny...isn't it the mind that makes everything...a reality?

Thanks for reading and receiving.  Peace Y’all!

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