A Fairy Tale Ending for My Hair-Scapades

Generation X, the generation which faced great transitions.

Yes, I am a 1990's kid.

I am a part of the generation that was still able play outside and get myself dirty.

A part of the generation that first explored tech-y devices and game consoles.

Transitions and changes were and still are inevitable.

So, what do I really want to talk about?

Nope. I am not going to rant about how the kids of today's generation should also play outside and all that.

I'm simply going to talk about my hair. LOL.

Yes, how I found my way back home - embracing my natural waves.

SPOILER ALERT: YOU ARE ABOUT TO VIEW A SERIES OF VAIN PHOTOS. BACK OUT NOW IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE IT. :))

Like everyone else, I started off bald. LOL.

My hair has been through practically anything and everything you can think off.

My hair was naturally straight. It was long and shiny - shampoo commercial caliber.

Like any little child's hair up until hormones kick in and ruin just about everything lovely about you.

I fashioned long, very long hair during the first few years of my elementary years.

My grandmother, aunts and Yayas very much enjoyed braiding my hair.

But I was too young to care what I looked like.

So imagine a well groomed little girl with braids and colorful clippies on her hair, leaning over the sidewalk canal with a improvised fishing net and an empty bottle of mayo fishing for guppies.

Yes. I was a boy back then.

I was in the fourth grade when my Mom decided to have my hair chopped off because I couldn't take care of my hair. And yes, I'm not embarrassed to say it was because of lice. LOL at this.

Then hormones played their crappy role in every teenagers life and my hair got kinky and more unmanageable.

I had my first Hair Relax Treatment when I was in first year of high school.

It was a home service treatment and of course I loved how my hair just went flat and shiny.

Hair Relax Treatment was a big thing way back in high school.

Then come college, Hair Rebond became a thing, a more expensive thing. And of course, I availed of it all the same.

Both treatments made my hair wonderfully straight but both always never failed to make my ends dry up.

Split end hunting was one of my favorite things to do to pass the time. LOL at this some more.

So I had to do something about my split ends. I tried hair gloss - temporary effect. I tried hair spa - no effect on my hair at all. I tried over the counter damage repair glob - I was too lazy too use it as often as directed on the label.

Apart from this, as hair grows out, my un-rebonded hair remained kinky, ergo I had to have a treatment done every 4 to 6 months or so - talk about expensive and hair damaging.

Then came the era of curls. Though I never gave digital perm a try, i tried the traditional curls.

It required more managing than I thought. So I wore curls for just a couple of months, and got my hair rebonded all over again. Yes, imagine how damaged my hair was back then.

So I decided that if I wanted to put on some curls, I'd resort to temporary curling gadgets. So I bought me this really nice and expensive (sigh) porcelain hair iron. The outcome was lovely, but apparently my rebonded hair would always impose it's unnatural straightness. No hairspray could hold the curls long enough. LOL. And of course, hair damage came along with the package.

So, what did I do?

I tried to remember how my natural hair looked like.

Then, I realized I couldn't. I don't really know what my natural hair looked like.

So, last April I decided to have my hair cut to a short length. It was the shortest it was in years.

When I cut it off, I also cut off the rebonded part of my hair  leaving just a couple inches of rebond treated hair with my natural hair grasping on to the roots.

I then researched on Hair Cellophane: "clear glossing agents are used which get deposited into the hair adding substance and shine by filling and plumping the shaft and sealing the cuticle layer".

So, I had this treatment done on my hair till it grew out again.

Now, I'm five months in living with healthy hair. It's not perfect, I can still find one or two split ends here and there but what is lovely is that I discovered I had natural waves.

My hair isn't flat, like what most shampoo commercials wants to sell to us all.

My natural hair had volume, it had life.

Now as a maintenance I just use conditioner and use mousse or a curling lotion to take away the frizz.

But I generally like how bouncy and fun my natural waves are.

All these years I had this awesome set of waves underneath all that gunk of hair treatment.

I know not everyone may have the same result but I just realized that I should share this with the world because this came as a shock to me that I had been blessed with naturally beautiful hair, yet I chose to be a slave of what media defines as beautiful.

I am beautiful in my own right - we all are.

I'm not saying that I'm never going to try another treatment on my hair every again. I'm actually thinking of trying digital perm in the future. Haha!

But what I'm saying is that to find happiness and contentment in your own skin is truly an achievement - it took me 25 years to discover the true beauty of my crowning glory, how long will it take you to find yours?