Goodbye Natural HELL!

Sooo…I’ve decided to ONCE AGAIN get a relaxer.  I’ve decided the natural life isn’t for me!  I can’t get jiggy with dis ish.  I’ve been natural for 3 years, and cut off the rest of my relaxed ends last spring.  So you may be asking why I’m going back to the creamy crack.  Am I addicted? Losing my mind? Going insane? Forgetting my roots?  Actually, none of the above.  I loved when my hair was relaxed.  It was the longest it had ever been since I was a child.  I was relaxed for 2 years before “going natural” with no problems.  My hair was growing wonderfully and I enjoyed every minute of it.

My hair was mid-back length and very healthy when I was relaxed (~2013).

Now I know this may sound confusing to the readers out there.  The only reason why I went natural in the first place was because of a relaxer mistake.  While in graduate school (Michigan – Go BLUE!), I would often visit home every few months to get a relaxer.  Then there were a few months where I couldn’t visit home and I had so much new growth that I needed to find someone to relax the growth sprouting from my head.  So I found A WONDERFUL stylist to give me a relaxer.  He knew that I was a student that was traveling over an hour so he allowed me to do a consultation and a relaxer all in the same day.  While he did everything RIGHT, my hair just wasn’t consistent.  He didn’t give me a relaxer strong enough so, while I no longer had new growth I had two different textures.  My old hair stylist relaxed my hair until a wavy state, he relaxed it somewhere between just a looser version of my hair and a step up above wavy.  While I appreciate him not damaging my hair, it just wasn’t straight enough for me.  I still had a HARD time doing my hair in under an hour especially since I had to babysit my hair now due to dealing with multiple textures/curl patterns.  So at this point I made a decision to grow out my hair.

For months I dealt with a mixture of relaxed and natural hair, and it was a constant struggle.  I wore weaves and wigs for about a year to deal with my natural hair while working out.  However, it still was a lot of work to wash my hair every week.  So after a few more months of the natural struggle I made the decision to go back to relaxing.

This is your hair....

and this is your hair on CRACK