Tangled

I remember the day that I started dreading my hair. I had just gone through one of the roughest times of my life and I was doing everything I possibly could to gain back the control I had lost. I went on an all raw food diet (I think my raw food blog is still kicking around the interwebs somewhere). I stopped running. I read my Bible every day. I burned incense and sat in the middle of my bed and meditated on my pain. I read books about nature and spirituality and grace. I journaled. I painted the walls of my family room orange and teal and brown and yellow. I wanted so much to believe that I was turning a corner and making something good and pure out of my life but as I look back on that time, I see now that all I was doing was white-knuckling it, squeezing the life out of myself in hopes that I would be able to shape Suzy into somebody else. But that one day, I knew my efforts weren't working, that when I sat down on the floor of my colourful room and stared into the full-length mirror, I still saw myself, and nothing else.

I sectioned out my hair and started knotting my hair into fluffy knots. I felt raw when I was finished like I was returning to the earth, as if I had nothing left of me. The deadness on my outside was finally starting to match the deadness on the inside.

This all sounds so awful, but it was the part of a grieving and healing process that I needed to walk through.

I became attached to my grief, carrying around my deadness as if it was some sort of wilted security blanket and just when I would start to feel alive I would reach up and roll my fuzzy dreads between my fingers and I'd remember "who I was" all over again. All the while this was happening, I was learning about grace and so my soul would fight this urge to return to the deadness despite my best efforts to stay stuck in the knot.

I began running again and eating real food. I started plugging myself into life rather than hiding in my smoke-filled room by myself. A healing was happening, and I could feel it. Instead of feeling the comforting fuzziness of my dreads, I began resenting the way the knots were sticking out in an unruly manner and so one day I started to comb out the really messy ones. My inside, my soul, was starting to breathe again and I needed my outside to breathe too.

One by one I combed out my dreads and bit by bit I became lighter, no longer holding onto the baggage that I had thought I deserved to carry. I was rising up from the earth and becoming Suzy again, but a stronger more loving version of me. I still have huge hair but it's a lot lighter than it was, that's for sure.

My dreads played a part in my healing process and for that I am thankful. From time to time I miss them, the soft pillowy way they'd circle my head like a hug, wrapping around me in primal self-preservation. I don't need my dreads to hold me down anymore. I embrace who I am now, and I am at peace.