Post by willowbranches on Jun 21, 2016 17:56:49 GMT
A Long Story and a Question
My hair has always been important to me; throughout an extended time in my life when my feelings and needs were being stifled, my outward appearance became my only means of self-expression, my hair the only part of my physicality that I could control, dictate, make beautiful to myself.
So for many years I exploited it. I spread a lifetime's worth of color through it, from the brilliance of rainbow hues to the dinge of decay. I sported bihawks and skunk patterns, and changed it drastically every few weeks. I sliced and fried it with abandon, and throughout that era it was me.
It served me well. I was playing at a mission, on one hand: break the image barrier, reveal to the judgmental the foolishness of their assumptions about the nature of an entity based solely on how it looks. I looked like a delinquent, with my ravaged coif and torn clothes, but was in all the advanced classes in school and never even skipped let alone had a run-in with the law. On the other hand, as a representation of the turmoil in which I lived, it screamed exactly what I was--angry, melancholic, manic, conflicted about my relationship to humanity--and that kept at bay most of the people with whom I had no desire to interact. Plus, it was pretty.
My hair has always distinguished me. Then I was known as the girl with the funky hair. People said that period was a phase and it would pass. Pass it did, but phase it was not. I moved on to taking special care of it, stopped cutting and coloring and just let it grow, not only because I became averse to the idea of toxic substances entering my system but also as a challenge to myself and my patience. But it still expressed the me of that time: learning to care about myself, healing, searching for zen.
And it still distinguished me. Maintaining it at mid-thigh length, I became known as the girl with the really long hair. While previously the display had been about the drama and discord, this time it was about finding peace. But I didn't find it; in swinging so intensely from disregard for harming it to obsession with keeping it healthy I felt instead as though I were paying penance for all the damage I had done before. It was a pain in the ass, frankly, to have to pull it out of the toilet every time I needed a wee, to have it catch in doors and windows, to sit for hours with a pair of shears snipping individual split ends, to not allow anything to touch it for the eons it took to dry, the minutia of all the control I needed to exert over it. It was probably only fair: I tortured it, so now it served to torture me.
Something had to give. I still loved it and felt it felt it represented a large part of my philosophy on life, and it had taught me much, but it was anything but zen. I still needed to let go of a lot of things... that old anger, resentment, impatience, malcontentment. I was not ready, however, to let go of my hair--I'd become attached to it, more than literally.
Dreads were the ideal solution, allowing me to keep all my 3 feet of hair while providing the circumstances which I hoped would lead me to the place I wanted to be emotionally. Dreads, to me, meant letting go of the control.
So I did, and in so doing found everything I was looking for: freedom, tranquility, acceptance, a deeper connection with my environment and those in it. They still distinguish me (any guesses how I'm known now?). Best of all, they are the most me hair I've ever had. They've done an awful lot for me, from simply serving as an impromptu pillow to pushing people past that omnipresent image barrier. They represent my personal growth, and are like my vision of how the world should be.
So I wonder: What is your Dread-O-Vision? What has having dreads, going through the process, done for you? What has it allowed you to accomplish? From the frivolous to the mundane to the profound, what does it help you see?
I'm a fantasy buff, so in one of my more frivolous episodes I saw the much-sought perfect, virtually effortless, permanent elf 'do, complete with filled-out hood (you know, the kind almost no one's hair is regularly big enough to have). Silly, I know, but I was utterly delighted by the thought
My hair has always been important to me; throughout an extended time in my life when my feelings and needs were being stifled, my outward appearance became my only means of self-expression, my hair the only part of my physicality that I could control, dictate, make beautiful to myself.
So for many years I exploited it. I spread a lifetime's worth of color through it, from the brilliance of rainbow hues to the dinge of decay. I sported bihawks and skunk patterns, and changed it drastically every few weeks. I sliced and fried it with abandon, and throughout that era it was me.
It served me well. I was playing at a mission, on one hand: break the image barrier, reveal to the judgmental the foolishness of their assumptions about the nature of an entity based solely on how it looks. I looked like a delinquent, with my ravaged coif and torn clothes, but was in all the advanced classes in school and never even skipped let alone had a run-in with the law. On the other hand, as a representation of the turmoil in which I lived, it screamed exactly what I was--angry, melancholic, manic, conflicted about my relationship to humanity--and that kept at bay most of the people with whom I had no desire to interact. Plus, it was pretty.
My hair has always distinguished me. Then I was known as the girl with the funky hair. People said that period was a phase and it would pass. Pass it did, but phase it was not. I moved on to taking special care of it, stopped cutting and coloring and just let it grow, not only because I became averse to the idea of toxic substances entering my system but also as a challenge to myself and my patience. But it still expressed the me of that time: learning to care about myself, healing, searching for zen.
And it still distinguished me. Maintaining it at mid-thigh length, I became known as the girl with the really long hair. While previously the display had been about the drama and discord, this time it was about finding peace. But I didn't find it; in swinging so intensely from disregard for harming it to obsession with keeping it healthy I felt instead as though I were paying penance for all the damage I had done before. It was a pain in the ass, frankly, to have to pull it out of the toilet every time I needed a wee, to have it catch in doors and windows, to sit for hours with a pair of shears snipping individual split ends, to not allow anything to touch it for the eons it took to dry, the minutia of all the control I needed to exert over it. It was probably only fair: I tortured it, so now it served to torture me.
Something had to give. I still loved it and felt it felt it represented a large part of my philosophy on life, and it had taught me much, but it was anything but zen. I still needed to let go of a lot of things... that old anger, resentment, impatience, malcontentment. I was not ready, however, to let go of my hair--I'd become attached to it, more than literally.
Dreads were the ideal solution, allowing me to keep all my 3 feet of hair while providing the circumstances which I hoped would lead me to the place I wanted to be emotionally. Dreads, to me, meant letting go of the control.
So I did, and in so doing found everything I was looking for: freedom, tranquility, acceptance, a deeper connection with my environment and those in it. They still distinguish me (any guesses how I'm known now?). Best of all, they are the most me hair I've ever had. They've done an awful lot for me, from simply serving as an impromptu pillow to pushing people past that omnipresent image barrier. They represent my personal growth, and are like my vision of how the world should be.
So I wonder: What is your Dread-O-Vision? What has having dreads, going through the process, done for you? What has it allowed you to accomplish? From the frivolous to the mundane to the profound, what does it help you see?
I'm a fantasy buff, so in one of my more frivolous episodes I saw the much-sought perfect, virtually effortless, permanent elf 'do, complete with filled-out hood (you know, the kind almost no one's hair is regularly big enough to have). Silly, I know, but I was utterly delighted by the thought
awesome thread btw 
