Remember that jam by India Arie? Yes, I hope it is playing at the back of your mind while you read this.
For over 6months, I have been flexing with myself over what to write because every experience since my last post has been very…personal. Turns out that although privacy is a good thing, it does not exactly align with my creative process, hence the 28 drafts I am yet to edit and publish. In the meantime, enjoy these stubborn thoughts that won’t leave me alone.
Today I am grateful for the many chances I have been granted to fully experience myself — well, most of me. The good, the bad and the extraordinary! Something many of you will die never knowing because you live in perpetual fear of your capabilities. I am not asserting superiority; rather, I am simply acknowledging one of my many blessings i.e. self-awareness.
On Sunday 16th April, I got bored and took a walk to the barber shop. “I would like to shave my head bald. I can help you take down the weave” I said to the barber, after startling him out of a siesta. It almost felt like I was disturbing him; because finding the pattern of the threads alone was a hustle! We joked a little about how I would have been talked out of my decision had I gone to a unisex salon.
“But it’s your head, you can do whatever you please with it” he added. Sending me into a near deafening silence and deep thought.
It is indeed my head and I can do whatever I want. Never mind the fact that I stalled with the decision after Rita — my braider, advised me to cut off all my hair since it was heat damaged and no longer growing. Never mind my desire to experiment with different colors and designs.
One of my silent fears is returning to dust having led an imitated dogmatic life. Have I mentioned that this is my 3rd haircut in a space of 5yrs? What if I actually prefer short hair; but because hair length is a mark of beauty, I have subjected myself to the exhausting experience of finding a new hairstyle every month?
As we unravel the last kiswahili (threaded cornrows that a weave is often sewed onto) , my scalp throbbing from the excruciating pain of taking out 6wk old hair, I start to question why I do not just live the way I want to be honest.
The internet is flooded with testimonies of people who have experienced unfathomable joy from living under complete delusion.
They decided chart their own paths and have had absolute bliss ever since. In no time, his machine is buzzing and off comes my fried hair as is exclaimed with every swing. “Should I shape the edges” he asks. Whole time I cannot stop running my fingers over my egg shaped head. “Whatever works” I shrug.
I think to myself how much I like this new look. How despite the attention seeking pimple on my left cheek, my skin is healthy enough to rock a buzz cut and my fat ass is the peach on top.
I snap a few selfies on my walk back home to show my close friends who thought I was bluffing about getting a hair cut; and in comes the deep ancestral sighs. Blinded by the idea that I only cut my hair when life boxes me, some of them ask what is wrong, to which I respond nothing.
There is nothing wrong. For the first time, I simply wanted the shower to run through my scalp. Unsatisfied with my response, they suggest hair care regiments and colors. I love that for me. That my friends just support my shenanigans.
Although I need to sit down and make peace with the parts of me that enjoy chaos and disruption, I like it here. I like deciding to chart a new course if the one I was hell bent on running does not pan out. It does not make me a quitter, but rather a lover of all the other things life has to offer. There is an infinite number of beautiful lives; but you may never experience them because you are crippled by the idea that there is only one mode of happy existence.
All this to say, you have more freedom to live however you desire than you allow yourself. So get that haircut. Try that new restaurant. Walk into an office you want to work with and ask for available positions. Forgive those who have wronged you. Make new friends — or not.
(OMG I am self contradicting and telling you how to live. Forgive me. Thank you for reading till this point. I did not want this piece to join my 28 drafts and I have struggled to finish it.)
All my love, Keep on Living🌻
