i am not my hair...OR ARE I

i have an asian 'fro. or as i call it, an ayzro.
half of my scalp grows hair that is fine and straight, half coarse and corkscrew-curly. it drives me mad. i perpetually have a frazzled look, as bits of curly ends pop off the crown of my skull. putting my hair up causes a Mrs. Brady bend that lasts until i shampoo it, but when i try to curl my hair for a night out, after three hours its dead straight. i could never get that full, sleek, sexy look that some of my friends had, and i would think, if i only had that hair, my life would be better. There would be one less thing ugly about me.

in college i discovered Magic Straight, a Korean concoction of chemicals that allowed my hair to be as flat uncooked angel hair. i'm not gonna lie - it was super convenient. i could shower and let my hair air-dry and it would lie perfectly straight. it felt great to whip my hair around during dance practice and have the strands fan out into a perfect circle. it felt great to tie my hair up and feel the stiffness of the base of my ponytail as it artificially resisted the curving pull of gravity. i felt like it made my enormously round head look smaller. i even felt glamourous. i felt more confident about running my fingers through my hair, about flipping it over my shoulder nonchalantly. but of course, all this came at a steep price - one that i, in my vanity, was only too glad to pay nearly yearly at a local Korean salon.

this past year in school, i had no time to look for a Korean hair place, and trusted no white-person-salon to get my hair as i liked it. and thus, over the months my head re-grew its native flora of wirey fly-aways. i felt frumpy and was constantly pissed off at my hair's refusal to make me look good. i felt like my head looked huge and puffy and rounder than it is. i left socal for summer vacation fully intending on visiting my Korean salon so i could become sexy again.

during my trip to india, i realized something.
there are worse things in life than shitty hair. there are better things i could be putting those hundreds of dollars towards.

people who have met me recently might be surprised to know that i was pretty much the epitome of awkward and extremely introverted up until a few years ago. i was the person who never said a word out of sheer unadulterated fear of embarrassment. i was the person willing to sacrifice almost anything to feel pretty so that i could feel accepted. i pored over beauty magazines. i researched plastic surgery in depth. i hid in the corners at parties and meetings and public functions. (well, until i discovered alcohol, that is.) i was so convinced that i was born terrifyingly ugly, and that the only way people would want to connect with me was if i was pretty. i had (and have, still?) such low self-esteem and sense of worth that for the longest time i could only cobble together an identity out of what what i thought others thought of me. and therein was my true problem.

it is a struggle that most of us endure - self-acceptance. realizing that the world is what it is, but also simultaneously that it is what you make of it. you don't conform to some arbitrary standard that people you don't even know have imposed on the world around you. you create your own world through your attitude. and i guess, sometimes it takes a trip to one of the poorest places in the world to make you snap the f*ck out of it.

coming to accept my hair has become to me a journey with far greater meaning than simply accepting the fact that i can only look like me, not like a model from an herbal essences commercial. it has become more of figuring out where i fit in in this world, how i can make a difference - what makes life worth living, and how i can make myself worthy of this life. by investing so much in torturing my hair into something it was not, i was putting value in something that isn't lasting - an image that i thought other people would value - as opposed to valuing my own self, what i am capable of, what i am able to give to the world.

i am my hair. i am a walking conglomerate of contradictions - curly and straight, wirey and fine, strong of will and weak of desire, big-boned and small of face. i am a sniveling, simpering wall flower, and a loud, joyous social butterfly. i am as cold as San Francisco in the summertime. i am as gentle as a roaring tide. when the wind blows, my hair parts in the middle of my head in a way that makes me look like a balding monk.

but you know what. that's okay.