Growing up, nothing terrified me more than being considered weird. Something very visible that made me stand out from my friends and sisters was my frizzy hair. I despised it because it made my life more difficult with its constant knots, and it also gave my sisters something easy to pick on me for. My older sister Christy even wrote a poem about what’s in my hair. One of the lines in the poem was “Enter if you dare”, as if my hair was a wild forest.  So when I heard about the chance to permanently straighten my hair (at least until it grew out), I was ecstatic.

For my twelfth birthday I asked for one thing: to get my hair relaxed. I thought that relaxing my hair would make me more attractive, something that just about every twelve year old girl craves. Flat ironed hair was very trendy at the time, and I l thought I would automatically be more cool if my hair had this look. After my birthday rolled around, I found myself sitting in the notoriously dreaded beauty salon chair: a location that had always caused me to fight back tears as a stylist ripped pulled at my hair in an attempt to get the knots out.

This time was worse than all of the times before. The cream like mixture that my bald hairstylist, Mr. Chelian, put in my hair made my scalp burn as if scorpions were crawling through it, much like my sister’s descriptions in her lovely poem. To make matters worse, Mr. Chelian had to wear latex gloves to rub the cream through my hair. Those latex gloves stuck to my hair in a way that made the tugging almost unbearable. They also made a squeaking noise that made me feel like I was his practice mannequin instead of a real person with nerves attached to their head. Conversation with him puttered out as it usually did whenever a hairstylist realized I was fighting back tears, so I was left to stare at his bald head and think about the fact that he would never understand the kind of pain I was feeling. The only thought that I had to comfort myself was the thought that this would be the last time for a long time that I would have to experience pain in a hair salon chair, and that it would all be worth it.

The whole process took an excruciating two hours. Before I left, Mr. Chelian reminded me to not get my hair wet for two to three days, which I agreed to before I went on my merry way. Despite leaving with what felt like a dry, burned scalp, I felt like a movie star when I walked out of Mr. Chelian’s doors. Somehow I believed my life would change as a result of my new locks. For the next couple days I basked in compliments and stole every glance in a mirror I could get away with.

When I came home from school on the second day of my new do, my mom told me that I was signed up for diving lessons and that my first practice was that evening. I asked her whether or not she thought it would be okay given the condition of my hair, and she said it would be fine. I was skeptical at first because she would have no reason to know how to handle relaxed hair; she was lucky enough to have naturally straight hair. However, my mom seemed confident in her answer so I decided she was probably right. I also didn’t want to be difficult, so I headed to practice as I was told.

Looking down at the water off of the diving board, I looked at my reflection. It reflected back my smooth ponytail with neat wisps of straight hair coming out, giving me that cool look I could only achieve with relaxed hair. I thought that since it had been over two days since I got my hair relaxed that it would probably be fine, but a pang of regret came over me as my feet left the board. The damage was done once I was in the water, either my hair would dry straight or it would dry curly. I left practice with one thing on my mind.

When I noticed the first spiral return as my hair dried, I screamed at my mom in my head. I was also mad at myself for trusting her. The feeling of the burning mixture and the tug of the latex gloves came over me again as I thought about how all of that pain was for nothing. I returned to that less cool, less attractive, less confident girl once my hair dried and all of my curls were back in place.

In the following weeks and months, when my hair was supposed to be relaxed, a curious thing happened. I began to like my natural hair.

I don’t know if suddenly my hair began to curl in the right ways as a result of puberty, or if my hair grew to the right length that made the curls appear less fluffy and more flowing, or if I simply changed my mind. Either way, I began to enjoy the appearance of my curly hair and entertain myself with the different ways in which it curls after every shower. If my hair had never become un-relaxed, I may have never grown the affectionate relationship that I have with it today.

Beyond simply learning to enjoy the appearance of my weird hair, I learned not to be a trend follower. Straight hair was very trendy then, but I was able to learn to like my curly hair despite its opposition to the straight hair trend.

Since the day my curls came back, I have had two relationships with the way I present myself: striving to develop my own style and setting trends, and wearing what’s comfortable and not caring about how I look. Though those two are very different relationships with fashion, they both require a certain level of confidence I did not have before I got my hair relaxed. I have learned that it doesn’t matter what others think, as long as you are comfortable with what you see in the mirror, your appearance won’t feel like something that defines you.

Nowadays I can’t be bothered with how other people judge me simply based on my appearance. Perhaps if I hadn’t made that dive, I would not have the confidence I have today.