My entire life, I thought I had straight hair.
You might ask, how do you NOT know your hair is wavy? Doesn’t it wave naturally?
It does, but only if allowed the opportunity and the encouragement to take its natural shape.
Growing up, if you were a girl, you got up early before school, showered, and then gave yourself an EXHAUSTING salon-level blowout every single morning. If you didn’t, if you let it *gasp* NOT be flat and shiny, you were considered dirty, unkempt, not feminine enough. The only exceptions being the CURLY folks, the female identifying goddesses who could NEVER ever be mistaken for straight-haired girls because their hair slingshots back into shape the moment any moisture hits it.
Over the years, I laid on more damage that society demanded, or so I believed. I bleached it to match my Marilyn aesthetic at the time. Platinum blonde, ramrod straight and then, ironically, hot rolled into submission to create the look of artificial pin curls.
All that bleach and all that heat, of course, destroyed the strength of my hair. It was brittle and, while it looked beautiful from the outside observer, I was losing a battle with it.
Growing up in South FL, the heat and humidity were my constant source of struggle. No matter what I did, how much I ironed my hair silky straight, it would fluff up like a chia pet within 15 minutes of going outside.
Looking at other girls around me who did not share this same struggle, I felt defeated. Why can’t my hair just lay flat? I mean, it LOOKS straight in the morning, I’ve always been able to shock it straight since childhood . . . What’s happening to my hair?
Well, motherhood happened. I was too tired to continue my battle with the blow dryer and flat iron every day, so I said fuck it, and just started letting it air dry.
At this point, my strands had been beaten down to the point where they were like, yeah . . . we’re not gonna lie flat and be cooperative, but we also don’t have the proteins and care required to spring back to life. So I got what could best be described as slightly bent frizz. I was very close to accepting this as just my lot in life when someone said, look at all that frizz! It looks like your hair is trying to curl.
My initial response was . . . No way! It’s definitely straight! It’s always been straight. I’ve worked really hard to assure it’s straight because, for me, the alternative was unattainable.
This kind soul turned me onto the curly hair method and assured me that If I put in the work to undo the damage I’d done to it over the course of my entire life, I would see significant change.
The day I finally accepted this was when schools shut down in Japan and I lost my job during the pandemic. I no longer had a reason to conform.
So, over the course of the next few months, I implemented the changes she had suggested and my hair improved dramatically! I won’t say it was always pretty . . . It was super awkward at first and I had to endure cold silent judgement when out and about in ULTRA conservative rural Japan, where any texture in your hair is equated with moral decay (not even exaggerating . . . try going to an onsen with a visible tattoo).
But now . . . my hair is thriving. As soon as water hits it in the shower, it clumps up and beings to curl. I haven’t straightened my hair myself in years.
If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like a metaphor, that’s because it is. Yes, this IS also the truth about my hair journey.
But just like my hair, I went through my entire life assuming I was straight. I’m married. I was married previously. I’ve had some very good relationships with men. I’ve had some REALLY bad relationships with men, but my relationships with my female friends have always felt a bit desperate, a showering of affection I tried to mentally attribute to my being on the spectrum.
Events in my life have recently caused some serious reflection . . . on female friendships I’ve had over the years that felt entirely one-sided, a longing for something deeper that just wasn’t reflected back at me. At a certain point, after losing my dearest friend to cancer in my early 20s, I shut down female friendships. They were too painful for me and I never understood why.
I am not straight. Never have been. I’m bisexual. This doesn’t change my relationship with my husband, any more than the fact that I appreciate most men would cause me to dart off after the nearest alternative. However, accepting this about myself has unlocked a sea of understanding about my past, about my role in those failed friendships, the expectations I was unknowingly placing on these girls which, because they were hidden, even from myself, they were destined to fall short of.
Over the course of the last month, I’ve been reeling with this paradigm shifting revelation and one thing I’ve come to understand is that I’m not my own type. I’m not drawn to girls who look like me (or at least look like I DID, with the pinup makeup and exhausting beauty routine). There’s nothing WRONG with that, but I’m not attracted to it because it holds no mystery for me. I know how hard they are working. I know the art and the artifice. Because I never looked at a woman as beautiful as Max and had FEELINGS, I assumed I had to be straight. If one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen makes me think *meh*, then I guess I must not be attracted to women.
But then, there are those women who simply do not give a fuck. Not a single one. And yet, they glow. They know no shame and have always known who they are and fight for the world as it should be, not as it is. And look at that! It appears I do have a type, after all. I guess you could say they are the Madis of this world, the Mirandas of this world.
To those women, thank you. I intend to approach life brackets emptied. Unredacted.
Love is love.
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My account was disabled for a couple of hours, and I had to leave my work place because it made me feel real sick and I just wanted to cry
Thank you to all the friends I made on here that helped me with messages, reddit threads, and even not letting me sink into a deeper hole 💜💜
I really thought I would not get it back, but turns out it was a mistake from the antispam bot. I had uploaded 3 consecutive posts; not reblogged; in the lapse of less than a minute yesterday. That must have triggered it.
Anyways, THANK YOU TO MY FRIENDS FOR HELPING ME 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷
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