Excerpts from the Diary of a Frustrated Hairmonger pt 1

I washed my hair on Sunday b/c my straight hair was starting to look a little crazy. The nice thing about straight hair is that when it's done, it's super cute. However, 5 days later, my curls were no longer bouncy and they went any which way they wanted - thus I looked CRAZY.

So, I washed my hair and I'm happy to say that my curls/elasticity bounced back FOR THE MOST PART. I had no completely straight sections of my hair, but some parts did show a looser curl pattern. My cousin says "that's normal, the more you wash, the more it will go back." I feel like I shouldn't have to worry about this at all.

The point in me being natural (w/o dreads) was to experience the versatility in natural hair. However my 4b strands are so sensitive that I can't experience this versatility in fear and actuality of my delicate strands being ruined! Thus, I am contemplating locking my hair again.

My original goal were two main things (and they're quite easy):
1. Be natural *b/c I love it & totally goes w/ my lifestyle
2. Obtain long hair

I don't have a problem with being patient to get long hair(it's not the easiest thing, but I don't have a problem w/ it). I feel like I've seen less hair retention in the past 3 months of being a free-strand natural than in the last 3 months when I had dreads. The maintenance and care associated with free-strand naturalness is very difficult with truly thick hair.

I was going to post about the fact that I don't see a lot of REAL 4b naturals w/ long hair on blogs/fotki (will post later) - this is probably why. The kinkier your hair is, the tougher it is to manage. Proper management leads to growth, thus it's probably not that we can't grow our hair long, it's probably just that the free-strandedness of our kinky coils makes it EXTREMELY difficult to achieve desired lengths!

Basically, I'm fed up with my free-strand hair, and when I had locks, I never complained about my hair. Right now, I'm battling: bad ends - they're knotted & dry AFTER my trim, dry scalp *although this was always an issue for me*, overall dry hair *no moisturizing regimen seems to work*, poor hair rentention *when I comb it out while washing, I always lose a lot*. I think I'm going back...