Standard of Being

Therapist as Human | Body of Evidence | Part 2

I can't explain why I initially started unraveling that first loc. It started as a chisel at the end and ended up being a full comb out of a single loc. When it was done I just stared at the curl that came out of it. It was beautiful. Loose. Free. It felt like a version of me that was unmuted and untamed, and I liked it.

That set the stage for another bout of me debating whether or not to comb them all out. I had been down this road before, going through the process of unlocking my hair only to return to locs because it was easier, more familiar. It reduced the decisions I'd have to make about what to do with my hair on any given day. This is my third set of locs, and I had told myself this would be my last. I had settled, locked in, literally and logically and was done cycling. But this time, the familiar reasons were not enough to stop me.

And I think it was because I needed an outward expression of a freedom I no longer had with my body. For the past several months my body has not felt like mine. Health issues I cannot control have made me feel caged and confined and restricted in ways that are hard to articulate and harder to exist with. And somewhere in the middle of that, my hair started to feel like an extension of what I was already living inside my body, locked up and wound tight with no room to breathe.

As I ran my fingers down one of the locs that cascaded passed my shoulders, I started thinking about how it's length was a superficial boost to my ego. Hair length made me feel beautiful. But a part of what creates the length and the thickness of a loc is the weight of hair that sheds but never leaves. Instead of falling away naturally it gets caught inside the tightly wound curl, settling into weight until it drops and hangs, creating an illusion of lengthened strength. I say illusion because, if the hair were not loc'd and allowed to exist untamed, the natural coils would appear shorter and expand horizontally and vertically, but not downward. And, for some reason, when it doesn't frame my face in a way that feels complimentary, it leaves me feeling insecure.

It didn't quite make sense to me then, if my body was already making me feel insecure with pain and mobility issues, for me I entertain adding another element of insecurity. And as I mindlessly chiseled away at another loc, I felt aggression leave my fingertips. I was angry at my body, at my situation. Digging into each loc and combing it out felt like giving the anger some place to go. As each section of the loc unraveled, I paused to pick out the lent and dead hair that had been accumulating and sat it in front of me like collecting debris. I loved my locs but I didn't love what it carried to create the false sense of security.

A friend of mine told me once that I looked better wearing my locs down instead of up in a ponytail because the length added youth. It was a well meaning compliment that surfaced, in a way that stung, a quiet awareness that youth and I were not as intimate as we once were. The relationship with my youth had grown harder to maintain, much like my relationship with my body, which was carrying the weight of illness and old traumas (dead hair), grief and guilt (lent) that made it feel heavier than it needed to be.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was combing out my locs because I needed my hair to do what my body could not. I needed to release it from holding on to things that weighed it down and free it to exists the way it wants to. I know wearing my hair in its natural state will require more of me on days when I already have less to give. But my body has taken so many decisions away from me that choosing this one feels like taking something back, like reclaiming a standard of being over a standard of beauty. I am giving myself and my hair permission to let go of the weight of other people's beauty standards and instead embrace the sensory pleasure that comes from playing with my natural curls whenever I want to.

And when the humidity causes my hair to rebel against every intention I had for it, I will smile in admiration. Because that rebellion is a reminder that there are still parts of me that refuse to be contained.

My hair is becoming a symbol of a season my body will not allow me to live any other way.

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