I cut my hair.

I started my dreadlock hairstyle: Saturday, December 18, 2004
I cut most of it off on: Friday, October 26, 2012

That’s
■ 7 years, 10 months, 8 days
■ 409 weeks
■ 2869 days
■ 68,856 hours
■ 4,131,360 minutes
■ 247,881,600 seconds

From the time I was little, my hair was a big part of my life. My mother, a great storyteller, may she rest in peace, would regale us with tales of our babyhood, about how she’d give us a bath and would rock us on a pillow on her lap while curling our hair as we fell asleep. She did that for all three of us – my sister and I until we started kindergarten and my brother until his 1st birthday, as is our tradition with boys.

Every morning, before school my mother combed our hair. She took pride in the elaborate yet school appropriate styles, tastefully incorporating our white (the colour allowed by our school) bow-clips and ribbons. And every evening she would undo those styles and give us a simple two-plait hairstyle for bed. She used to tell us, that she could recognize my sister and I, playing in the school yard among the other girls, because of our hairstyle. As we got older and started high school, the hairstyles got simpler but she still combed it every day.

Good Hair
What is good hair? Good hair is any hair that grows in my opinion. But for women and especially black women and even more so, black women in the Caribbean, “good hair” can mean lots of different things. In the not so distant past and I know it still exists today, good hair often means “white hair” or straight or curly hair. Hair that is kinky, is seen as inferior, even to us proud, black women…as was very apparent with all the brouhaha over Olympic Gold Medallist, Gabby Douglas’ hair.

My hair
My mother was of East Indian/French Creole descent – she had what lots of people deem “good hair”. My father is of Spanish/African descent. My hair is a cross between them both. It’s thick, long and luxuriously kinky. In my opinion, the best hair, because it is all mine!

I have worn it in its glorious natural state for most of my life. The one blip was the result of a cousin of mine wanting to straighten it because she felt it was a rite of passage. In her eyes, it was not good hair. I remember one of my aunts being extremely upset that she put chemicals in my hair. In the 8 months or so of “relaxed”, so-called better hair…my 17yr-old self was NOT impressed with the time-consuming care of this kind of hair. What they don’t tell you about this rite of passage is that you have to repeat it every six weeks or so and then there are all the treatments in between. Thus, it only took eight short months, for me to start growing out the relaxed hair.

My mother knew I wanted to try dreadlocks from since then, but she was against it. In her eyes, dreadlocks were dirty and unbecoming. I got opposition every time I brought it up. I decided to do it anyway in ’04. She did not approve. The dreadlock hairstyle is extremely high maintenance when you first start them. I remember my mother being surprised when my hair was styled quite nicely with the locks. I think she feared that it would be like what she grew up with – the rasta hairstyle being worn by ruff and tuff men.

As my hair grew, so did people’s admiration of it – it was thick, getting long and it was luxurious. I wasnt trying to blend in. I was glorying in my me-ness. They loved it. And I ate that shit up. But over the years, my hairstyle seemed to have bestowed upon me the perception that I was a rebel, Rasta Barbie, Empress, Lioness, Serious earth mother, Natural chick, Artsy-fartsy, Weed-smoker. I was in St Vincent for five days last year and was offered weed EVERY day I was there.

I’ve often been asked when people saw me eating meat and especially pork…how rasta a gwaan so? To which my standard response still is, “It’s a hairstyle not a lifestyle. Besides, have you ever seen a lion or a lioness grazing?”

Now, there are people in my family who did not like the way I wore my hair. I fought the stigma of rasta with my family for a long time. I suppose my hairstyle grew on my mother but she never really accepted or liked it. She wanted me to go back to my natural state.

On her deathbed, I made her two promises and I gave her one assurance. I will share one of those promises and my assurance – I told her that I was going to cut my hair for my birthday (I didn’t), then she died a week after my birthday and I had other guilt to process. My assurance to her was that, she didn’t have to worry about me, that I would be ok and she could let go. She had been worrying for weeks that, she was leaving me literally alone. (To my sister and brother – she knew you two were settled and had people in your lives who would love your through your grief.)

The decision
For the last two years, since my mother’s death my hair grew longer and heavier. It was a burden. It represented an unfulfilled wish. It was also heavy with pain. Since I started that hairstyle, I’ve experienced the most pain in my life and I’ve grown up. The most painful being the loss of my mother, my rock. The history I carried on my head, somehow kept me from cutting it.

I used to say, I will cut it after some life-changing event. That happened and I didn’t do it. I was afraid. Over the years, somehow, I started hiding behind the hair. I let it speak for me. Sometimes, people heard the real me…but most times, they didn’t. My hair was more interesting than I was and people believed what ever they saw to be real.

Even after I made the decision of sound mind to cut my hair, when it came down to the actual act, I had an epic breakdown. Tears ever more. Talking it over with a close friend, we both realised that I was carrying guilt for not doing what I said I was gonna do two years ago. I was afraid that not having my hair to speak for me, I would have to start speaking again and I had forgotten along the way…how. I was afraid of the change. When did my hair become me? Someone said, cutting it might change my luck…thankfully I believe that we create our own luck.

At the first cut, there were no tears and I was at peace. It occurred to me at that point that part of my breakdown was because I had an irrational fear that I would have been in physical pain at the first cut. As my stylist cut, I felt freer and freer. When she first started, I thought there was a part of me doing it, so that I can fulfil the promise I made. But the lighter my head became, I realised I was doing it for me and I had no regrets. My friends weighed in after the cut but I think, if it’s on your head/person, you are free to do whatever you will with it. I chose to end that part of my history and start anew, so that I can further evolve into the me I was created to be. I don’t miss it. I didn’t keep any of it.

I needed a change. I needed to be free. I decided to cut free of it.

…and I was ok.