Going to an all-girls college with frizzy hair and a physique that gave the impression to be creating a complete lot sooner than these round me was a recipe for catastrophe. Once I was 13, my mother inspired me to start out straightening my curls, which led to weekly journeys to the salon for a remedy adopted by seven days devoted to sustaining that straightness. I could not get it moist. I could not get it sweaty. I could not put my hair up throughout the day or sleep on it too exhausting. My curls had been my Achilles heel, and I refused to let anybody see what they really appeared like untamed. On the time, I most popular that the remainder of the world see me for who I assumed I wished to be: A mirrored image of the blonde, skinny ladies who bounced across the cafeteria like they had been the principle characters in their very own TV exhibits. I felt too huge, and assumed the remainder of the world discovered me to be an excessive amount of, too. So I made myself smaller and straighter.

Then, I went to varsity, and two issues occurred. Freshman 12 months, I began watching Intercourse and the Metropolis, and grew to understand Carrie Bradshaw’s curls as part of who she was (plus, she was a author, one thing I desperately wished to be)—even when I wasn’t fairly there but with my very own hair. Then, Sophomore 12 months, I found I used to be homosexual. I am grateful that popping out was a fairly seamless course of for me (and by chance I went to a school that principally shouted, “Do not forget to convey your rainbow to class!”), and searching again, it makes excellent sense that this was when my relationship with my curls began to vary. Revealing one reality was serving to me regulate to a different, and I started to really feel extra comfy sporting my hair pure. I wasn’t all the way in which there, however I used to be getting nearer.

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By the point I graduated, my hair was cropped brief and curled on the prime (which, sure—made me look much more like my dad). It could nonetheless be a number of years till I absolutely stepped into my id, however as I struggled with determining how one can costume my physique and be comfy with greater boobs and wider hips, I experimented with what it meant to be who I used to be. Devoting much less time to taming my curls meant extra time for introspection, writing, studying books, and getting exterior. As a substitute of preventing with my hair, I began in search of methods to let items of my persona out: I acquired a couple of tattoos, pierced my cartilage, wore brilliant colours, and even dyed my hair pink. In her best-selling e book, Untamed, Glennon Doyle writes, “When a lady lastly learns that pleasing the world is not possible, she turns into free to discover ways to please herself.” And this was definitely the case for me.

Like so many individuals who had been pressured to distance themselves from their stylists throughout the 2020 lockdown, my relationship with my hair shifted as soon as once more in quarantine. Within the months of stillness, my hair grew longer, and I celebrated small milestones like placing it up in a ponytail. I minimize it myself only one time, however issues felt totally different—it was like I had realized that reducing my hair was a method for me to dissociate from myself, and performing what had as soon as been a ritual now felt like I used to be making an attempt on another person’s id within the hopes that it could assist me discover my very own.

Now, my accomplice (a fellow curly woman) ceaselessly tells me how a lot she loves my hair, and by no means fails to make me really feel lovely for leaning into its thick, wild, and (on some days) unruly nature. I have been rising it out for the previous few months, experimenting to see how lengthy I can preserve it with out it driving me up the wall or requiring hours of in-shower detangling. And all through the method, my hair has change into an extension of my persona: vibrant, daring, and bouncy. After years of making an attempt to seem like everybody else, I lastly seem like me. And I am precisely who I wish to be.