The Hair Saga, Part 4: Killing the Beast

Ever since I was fourteen year old, and mother nature decided to grand me with this gift...

...My daily routine has consisted of one goal: killing the beast that is my hair. Tenth through twelve grade was seemingly entirely devoted to spending over an hour burning my head with a flat iron, pouring chemicals into my hair to straighten it once and for all, bleaching the shit of my highlights, and thinning it with what felt awfully similar to a razor.

And every time, my hair would get angry and grow back with a vengeance. And with every trip to the hair salon, my hair's reaction time would grow faster. I swear, the stuff is like Pavlov's dogs: every time it smelled chemicals, or burning, the general of my hair army would shout out to his soldiers:
"Okay, listen up you guys. There's going to be an attack on us today. We may look like we're already dead, but just stay strong. Resist the bleach, my fellow dead skin cells, resist the bleach!"

And so they did. They resisted the bleach. As the smells would get dauntingly closer, my curls would retreat to the place where hair is free to roam. They became so organized, so good at defensive tactics, that all the "no-fail" straightening product in the world would fail, sending my hairdressers into a sputtering mess of "but I--that has never--why would it--are you human?"

Well, friends, I've discovered that instead of continuously bouncing back, my hair has found its breaking point. Once we reached the farewell to my black hair, that was it, it was closed for business. While I had became convinced that nothing in the world could halt the attacks from my hair, halt they did. Bleaching my entire head in August was the final straw--and so, my hair decided to turn into straw, refusing to grow, or braid, or do that cool flippy-thing that so delightfully happens by accident.

Nothing. Nada. I'm pretty sure the hair has reached nursing home status, complaining about how it had to work so hard, shooting out of my head mere seconds after leaving the hair salon. "I grew ten miles in the snow, missy, and this is the thanks I get??"

Not so say that my hair cooperates nicely, and I hop out of bed looking like Jennifer Aniston. My roommate still gets a kick out of the fact that when I wake up, my hair literally sticks straight up in a ponytail, or does this:

Houston, we have a problem

And, if I straighten this dead mass on my head, in the words of my roommate: "then you just wake up looking like a troll doll."

And so, I'm left with this floppy, no-longer-angry-but-too-tired-to-cooperate bundle of straw.

Don't kill your hair, kids. Troll dolls are scary.

Namaste.