Dreadlock Assessment

Yesterday was my two year dreadaversary! I didn't even remember to celebrate.  Dreads, the great adventure I once blogged about, and blogged about, and embarked on, and jumped ship on, then waited for years, then started again, has become just another hairstyle.  In fact, it's lasted longer than most other hairstyles I've had in the last nine years.  I began my dreadlock journey with the goal of having my locks for a full year or longer.  Now I've blown by my two year dreadaversary without even blinking.  My dreadlocks, that began this short:

Are now this long:

Dreadlocks in Central Park in the fall

Dreadlocks on a dragon boat in China

I had dreadlocks for my wedding.

I had dreadlocks for the last family picture.

I've had dreadlocks for the last two years of school pictures.

I've gotten used to getting the looks at the water park, the grocery store, the train station, etc.  I've gotten used to being approached with questions about my dreads by people all over. from the DMV to the streets of New York.  Strangers treat me differently, that's for sure.  The guy at the carwash asked if I smoke weed, so did the teenagers on the train.  The cute mother of two at Home Depot made a hallucinogen joke.  But most of the questions are about the dreads themselves.  How did I get them? What do they feel like? Can I wash them?


I love my dreadlocks.  I love the way they look, the way I have an untamable mane of hair that takes zero effort to do, looks fantastic in the woods, out of rivers, after 12-hour plane rides, and after driving down the freeway with the windows open.  It can rain, snow, sleet, or hail, and my hair will look the same.  I like that they are an instant conversation starter.  I love the way my students think I am somehow magically a better teacher because I have cool hair.

But I also hate my dreadlocks.  I hate that they feel like having 100 wool ropes attached to my head, always slightly scratchy.  At night, I have to carefully pull my woolen mop over to one side, and rearrange it every time I roll over.  If my husband wants to cuddle, I have strategically arrange my head and locks to avoid asking to him to cuddle his face into a wool sweater. Dreadlocks are not cuddly. Not even a little bit.  The other day Allie gave me a hug and exclaimed, "Your hair is so..." I nodded excitedly, expecting her to comment on how much my hair had grown, but she surprised me. "Scratchy!" she finished.  I hate that my hair still will not admit defeat, but continues diligently through every day and night to try and escape the knots, emerging as loose hair in bits and swarms between dread clean-up appointments. It drives me nuts that my hair is continually getting caught on any piece of jewelry I wear on my neck or ears.  The only time it's not getting caught is if my hair is in a ponytail, but my dreadlocked ponytail is so prodigious that I am unable to lean my head back in the car, but must sit hunched forward.  I can, after two years, finally put my hair up in a bun, but it's a fifteen minute process to get everything just right, and gives me a headache if I wear it very long.

Over Christmas break, in a desperate fit of needing to change something, I convinced my long-suffereing, dreadlock-tolerating husband to dye my hair.  It took HOURS to coat each individual dreadlock.  In the end, the dreads did not absorb very much dye, and my hair was only slightly redder than when I began.  I think I might try bangs next, but I am beginning to question my commitment to the dreadlock hairstyle.  It has all the advantages and disadvantages of a normal hairstyle, but more dramatically.  It is dramatically easier to take care of, but it's very resilience to change and outside influence means that it resists styling, and, to some extent, cleaning.

There are times when having dreadlocks is freeing.  I can camp and hike for days, and my hair looks like it did on day one.  I can walk in the rain, jump in rivers, and have all sorts of adventures without worrying about my hair.  However, dreadlocks come with their own "can'ts."  I can't walk through a thicket without snagging my hair.  I can't wear some of my coats because of the Velcro on the collars. I can't shower just before I go to bed because my hair takes about five hours to dry in the winter, and my pillow will be damp all night if I do.  I can't take a quick dip in a pool, because I'm worried that my dreads will trap the chlorine in the center and damage my hair.  I worry about dirt and slimy things getting in my hair and working their way to the center of the dreads, where they will stay forever.  Gross.  My hairstyle is impervious, but I only have about two and a half ways to wear it.

So where does this leave me?  My dreadlocks get longer and more awesome with every passing month, which alternately makes me delighted and horrified.  Longer means more of these things! More scratchy stuff to deal with! How on earth will I style it when there is more? Good grief!  But they look. so. cool. And I've put two years into them, and I will probably never do dreads again after this.

Should I keep them until they grow to head-turning, fantastic lengths, or chop them off to a pixie cut?

The Old Pixie

But then I'd have to grow it out all over again. 

Catch Up

I am dead, nor have I abandoned this blog.  I just got really, really, really, really busy doing lots of cool stuff.  This is the post just to say that I'm coming back.  My school has unblocked blogspot, so I can blog here and there while my students work on stuff, like their journals, which they're doing now.  So blogging should happen again.  Huzzah!

Here are some highlights from the last six months:

April:  I had dreads
          I decided to move in with my boyfriend, the Pirate.

May:  I moved in with the Pirate
         I finished the school year and moved my classroom, again

June:    I ran away to the desert with my friend Brian for three and a half weeks of climbing, hiking, camping, and reading.
          I still had dreads.
          I got engaged!!
          I flew out to Indiana to be with my sister as she had her first baby.

July:   A new nephew arrived on the 4th of July, and I got to drive across country with my mom, which was awesome.
         I camped and hiked and camped and hiked, with family and friends.

August:  I hiked and camped some more, then went back to meetings.
           I still had dreads.
           School started.

September:    School kept going.
                     I still had dreads.
                     The Pirate and I decided to buy a house.

October:   We put our first offer down and are waiting for the counter offer.

Did you hear that?  That was the rumble of the earth shaking as tectonically big things happen in my life in a short amount of time.

Whew!

(I still have dreads!)

Oh, and by the way? This happened.

At 8:45 a.m. on Saturday, February second, I was waiting in a parking lot, trying to peer through the shop window.  Although I was dressed in sweats and an oversized long sleeve t-shirt, my car held a dress, a dress shirt, make-up, and my nice coat.  My purse was packed with trail mix and books.  I was ready.  Ready for this to happen:

I have dreads again!  From 9:00 a.m. to after midnight, I sat in a chair in the office of Salon 21 in Orem while The Amazing James turned my normal hair

Into something much more fun.

The original time estimate was only 6-8 hours, but it turned out that I have deceptively thick hair.  James thought I'd have about 50-60 dreads at the size I wanted.  Instead, I have around 110.  So eight hours turned into fifteen, and James and I swapped life stories, talked philosophy, and watched the entire first season of the new Doctor Who.  I missed the dance concert I had intended to go to with Rachel and Allie, but I walked out of the salon at about 12:30 a.m. with a head full of dreads.  And I am very, very happy.

I didn't tell my family I was getting dreads that day.  I didn't tell my friends.  I did tell my 250 students, but mostly to prepare them for the change.  After all the fuss, fuss, and even more fuss that I made about my first dreads, only to have them need to be combed out after only a few months, I was ready to do this the quiet way.  I am the proud and happy owner of a head full of song quotes and fragments of misremembered poems, packaged on the outside with a thick layer of dreads.

Wahoo!

Dread Reprise (Someday)

Since summer started, I have been craving dreadlocks again.  I want to be able to drive with the windows down on the freeway and not worry about my hair.  I want to be able to camp, hike, backpack, climb, swim, and work out with my hair looking like I'm about to go on a date.  I want to meet my original dreadlocks goal, the one inked on my bucket-list: to have dreads for at least a year.  I want to see what it's like to have long dreads, I want to experience what dreads are like at six months, a year, or two.  I will get dreadlocks again.

But not yet.

I'm still researching, for one thing.  After last time's failure, I have a lot to think about and decisions to make. Second, I'm enjoying having long, classy, loose hair right now.  I like being able to braid it, curl it, do it in elaborate twists, and watch the highlights--absent for the two years I had a pixie cut--reappear and streak through my hair.  I enjoy being able run my fingers through my hair, or letting a boy play with my hair.  Third, it's probably that this time, I would get my dreads professionally done.  Last time the burden fell almost entirely on Di, for which I felt awful.  Then, when I had to take them out, I felt worse.  If I have my dreads locked at a studio, it will probably cost me several hundred dollars.  At this point, Japan, Boston, camping trips, etc., have cleaned out my disposable income and my savings.  Right now I'm telling myself that when I finally get my car paid off, I will get dreads again.  The earliest that might happen is next winter, but it might not be until next summer.  So I have six months to a year to make some money, pay off my car, and enjoy my hair while it grows.

But still, oh internet, this is your official notice.  Dreadlocks are coming back.

Since the dreadlock craving hit me, I've been once again feverishly researching dreadlocks and information about creating them.  This time, I'm approaching it with even more of an open mind than I did the first time.  I emerged from months of research last time convinced that I should backcomb, wax, and use rubber bands.  Now, having pulled out the gluey mess of disintegrated rubber bands out of my dreads, combed out my dreads to discover months old wax and dirt caked in the center, and having watched the knots that had been so painstakingly and friendship-strainingly created migrate out the ends and into nothingness, I intend to neither wax, use rubber bands, or backcomb.  I'm investigating other methods that sound promising.  Plus, my hair will be longer, and I'm willing to dread my locks a little thicker, all of which should contribute to healthier, longer-lasting dreads.

To remind you of why I want dreads, here are few memories:

Update

I called two salons yesterday about my dreads.  One offered to "fix" them for $50.  Then I asked what they meant by "fix."  Turns out they would just cut off all the loose hair and roll the dreads really well with a lot of a product.  While that would make them look better for a week or so, it isn't a permanent solution.  Goodness only knows what they would do about the tips.

Salon number two sounded a bit more legit about their dreads, but, based on my over the phone description, say it would probably cost $150-$200.  This is money i would be willing to pay if I thought it would be a permanent, or at least long-term, solution.  I purchased a mini-crochet hook, the most highly recommended method of dread maintenance, yesterday morning.  Last night, after hauling yet another load of my crap up to my new apartment, I settled in to see if I could even make headway against the dreads on my own, or at least figure out if they were repairable at all.  I sat right on the counter in my pjs and got up close and personal with the mirror, that crochet hook, and my poor, ailing dreads.  Friends, I couldn't fix even a hair, not one.  The knots of my dreads, once so tight and compact, are migrating out the unraveling dreads, and the remaining dread is shrinking.  As the knots weaken, hair is liberating itself from the dreads like crazy, and there is more loose hair every day.  I am thinking that even with salon help, my dreads my be doomed.  I think if I really want dreads, good dreads, these are already lost.  I'd need to pick them out and start over, which is what some people have already started recommending.

First, I'd like to offer a sincere apology to all my friends who helped put the dreads in.  I feel like I've failed you and let you down after all your hard work.  I promise not to ask you for help taking them out, or to put them in again some day if I decide I want to try again.  My hair and I will have to muddle through without bothering you for a while.  Thank you for all your hard work and sacrifice so that I could try this, I wish I could give you the return in your investment you deserve.

What I would do differently if I ever do this again:

1. Have longer hair.  Short dreads are possible, but harder.  They take a lot more maintenance, and a little unraveling is a much bigger problem.  Longer dreads lock up faster and stay better. There's also more you can do with them, instead of just put a headband on everyday.  I couldn't wait for my hair to be long, and thought I could deal with the issues that come with short dreads.  I was wrong.

2.  Bigger sections.  I love my tiny, tiny dreads, but I think that's probably part of the problem as well.  Larger dreads lock up faster and stay better as well.  I still don't want big, fatty dreads, but I think I would go larger than what I have now.  I thought I could deal with the issues that come with tiny, short dreads in straight, stubborn hair; I was wrong.

3.  Decide that if I really want dreads so desperately and so badly, then I'd better save up for them.  Instead of trespassing on the goodness of my friends, I should save up the $500 or so to get salon dreads, which might include a road trip to a good salon.  I should also budget for maintenance appointments for the first year or so probably.  Basically, I should make sure I want dreads instead of a trip to Europe or a new computer or my own apartment.  I thought I could deal with doing it the cheap, homemade way with short, skinny dreads. I was wrong.

I've started breaking the news to my students.  The dreads are making their farewell tour.  When I have time to pick them out in the next week or two, I will.

Two Weeks Later

Two weeks ago, I wrote Fear and Dreads, timidly admitting that I may have to take out my dreadlocks.  I read the comments, considered the feedback, and looked long and hard on my dreads.  I decided to give my precious dreads another month.  Maybe they were just going through a phase, maybe I was just being panicky about the ends unraveling.  Two weeks later, it's official:  the ends are really and truly unraveling again.  Twenty days after taking the rubber bands of the tips, I would estimate that half of the redreading that Di, Nick, and I did in late July has unraveled.  Six hours of work by myself and my self-sacrificing friends, a month of patience with rubber bands again, and it seems to have made no difference.  With each washing my dreads get tighter, which is good, except my magic mom-hair rebels against being that tightly knotted and wound, so it pushes the knots out the ends.  My dreads are shiveling and unraveling.

The snarling and loose hair is also getting worse.  When I wrote two weeks ago, most of my dreads had at least one kink, the worst ones had two, and some had full-blown loops.  In the short space of fifteen days, they have continued to mutate.  Nearly all dreads now have two kinks, zig-zags, or loops.  The best have only one.  The worst ones now have three to five.

The larger loops have now started to cause hair to slip out of the end half of the dread, meaning I now have loose hair at the roots and more loose hair sticking out half way down.  The kinking and looping is worst on the dreads that spend all day underneath my headbands, but the way the dreads look, I can't go to school without wearing one.  

I don't know how much getting my dreads "repaired" at a salon would cost, but considering that getting them done initially costs $300-$500, I'm worried it will cost $100-$200 to get them repaired, which may just be another temporary fix.  I think fixing them myself is getting to be out of the question.  It would take more hours than I am willing to put in to fix them, and, once again, it would probably only be a temporary fix.  My hair is winning.  It's rejecting the dreads like a bad organ transplant.

However, my dreads still look pretty decent when they're pulled back, with the roots well hidden.  I'm still getting compliments on them nearly every day.  Many of the teachers at my school I considered conservative and "mommish," have come up to tell me how cute my hair is and how much it suits me.  Honestly, the dreads do suit me.  Even people who don't like the dreads admit that they fit who I am.  I still look in the mirror sometimes and think to myself, I love these dreads.  They look amazing and beautiful; I'll never change. Other days I look in the mirror and think to myself, Hell, those things have got to go.  They look awful, gross, and nasty.  Ew.  They have to go NOW.  Then I'll wake up the next day and have switched.  Sometimes my perspective switches partway through a day.

My dreads look good enough that the thought of their doom makes me grieve.  But I think it's time.  I'm still exploring a few last ditch options:  I bought a mini crochet hook, and I'll call a salon today to price out repair.  But if those options don't pan out, my dreads will probably be gone within a month.  Oh sorrow, sorrow.

Fear and Dreads

It's time to say something that has been steadily gnawing at my mind.  It's something that first occurred to me months ago as a passing thought.  It's something I've tried to hide from, ignore, bury deep, cover up, and deny.  It's gone from passing thought to hidden doubt, to mild worry, and is now an all out raging fear that needs to be expressed.  But I haven't said anything, I've soldiered on.  But today, it's time to confess:  I'm worried, concerned, and troubled about the future of my dreads.  They may, in fact be doomed.

I'm frightened, Auntie Em.

This summer, in early July, after adventures in the ocean and chlorinated swimming pools with my nieces and nephews, the rubber bands on my dreads were dissolving into globs of goo seeping into the core of my dreads.  So I stayed up late one night in the dorm room bathroom in Ithaca College while my nephews slept, and I took out the rubber bands, a painful process that involved extracting the now fragile and twisted rubber bands in pieces.  In many places the goo stayed.  I can still find bits of it now, months later.

Right after taking the bands out in early July.  You can see the late night doubt all over my face.  

After washing my hair a few times, I actually liked the way they looked band-free much better.  My hair certainly felt much better without over a hundred rubber bands in it.  Compliments continued to come in from unexpected quarters (people at airports, gas stations, old ladies, etc.), and I thought that all was well.  But about a month after I had taken the bands out, it was pretty clear that the ends, far from dreading up naturally like I had hoped they would, were unraveling instead.  Pretty soon I had about four inches of loose hair.  It became clear that I would need to do something about it. 

Just before redreading the tips in late July.

Of course, that meant that Di and I and Nick-in-her-basement once again spent hours working on my hair.  At the end of another several TV shows and a couple mini-movies, my tips were redreaded and secured once again with bands.  This time I was careful: no pools, which was hard during the month of August. 

Tips all tightened up and incubating in their bands again.

Mid-late August, the tips look were looking secure.  And the bands were starting to get fragile again, it was time to take them out.

But the front always looks best.  That's because that's where my face is.  

After giving the tips a month with bands, on the eve of my three month of dreadiversary, I took out the bands.

Soooo much softer.

Three months strong.  

Now, a little over a week later, I am faced with an unpleasant reality:  my dreads are beginning to unravel again.  Not only that, but now, after three months, there is a veritable swamp of loose hair, some of it in very large chunks. 

The loose hair can supposedly be fixed if I find a microscopic crochet hook and put in another 10-20 hours of labor.  Also, now that the dreads are a few months old, the dread/not dread process is beginning to show.  Some of my dreads have just grown out, with no dreading at the roots.  Others have begun to dread on their own, which is good, but they’re not dreading up cleanly.  My dreads are growing in zig-zags and loops.

This is probably the worst one, but most of them have at least one loop or  zag or both.

Supposedly, if I control the dreading process of the roots by constant maintenance, I can help prevent some of that.  This will involve working on every single dread individually, then rebanding the roots for another month, and hoping that fixes the problem.  I would need to repeat this process with each dread as it needs redoing—probably every few months.  So what I currently have are an inch to two inches of snarled roots forested with loose hair, then some loops and zags and more loose hair, followed by a few inches of solid dread (smooth but scratchy, the way it’s meant to be), and then topped by one to three inches of loose tips.  Here’s a pictorial tour of the way it looks when I’m not trying to hide the problems.  The way it looks is disheartening.  I keep wearing thicker and thicker headbands to try and hide the problems at the roots.  And I don’t know if it’s going to get better.

The harsh reality.

Do you know that problem with roots?  They grow.  They take over.  

This is with a headband.  And it still looks like that.  :(

So now I am forced to acknowledge that my dreads may be doomed.  That's hard to face.  I went into this so committed, so ready to put up with any snags and problems, so mentally prepared to give any necessary time and maintenance my dreads could ask for.  Now, I’m staring down the barrel of probably 20-30 hours of work to get them looking passable again, which may not even matter because the tips may continue to unravel.  Maybe, if I put in another 20 hours blunting the tips, I can halt the unraveling, but that’s a maybe.  I don’t know if I have enough solid dread in my dreads to actually work in all that loose hair and tip without tearing apart the dread I do have. 

When I went into this, I thought that dreading was a drastic enough process to overcome my hair.  You see my hair will always default to classy no matter what I’ve tried to do to it.  I've curled it and permed it and punked it and now dreaded it.  Every single time, my hair will win.  I curl it and it goes back to straight.  I perm it and it gradually loses its curl.  I chop it off and feather it and dye it purple, and it always looked like a mid-30s mom-bob by the end of the day.  Now, I have backcombed and rolled and banded and rebanded and begged it, and it is rebelling against these dreads with all the stubbornness it has.  And it has a lot.  It’s genetic.  My sister has my hair, too, we got it from the matriarchs in our family.  Looking at my mother and her mother I know certain things.  My hair will never go gray, it will always be thick, Pantene Pro-V commercial thick and strong and smooth. 

But that magic hair is destroying my dreads.  If I want to keep my dreads, it will require an all-out war and siege against my hair that I may not be able to win despite my best efforts.  Do I put in another 40-60 hours to champion what may be a losing cause?  Do I enlist my friends’ help again to mount another offense?  Do I acknowledge defeat, and gather friends to put in 20 hours to take out the dreads?  It’s the middle of the school year, so I can’t just shave my head.  Do I apologize to the friends who have given so much time and effort to helping me get this far and take out all their hard work, or do I enlist their help for more hours of painstaking labor in this possibly doomed venture?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my dreads.  I’ve enjoyed every day with them.  I love having hair that looks the same whether I drive with the windows down on the freeway, spent the night on the couch, wore a bike helmet five miles, camped for days, or any other adventure.  All I have to do is throw on a headband and I’m ready for a date or school.  I love that my hair stopped producing grease to the point where I often forget when the last time I washed my hair, because, although I wash it more than once a week, I once let it go for almost two and noticed no real difference.  I love the way they look on me, especially on the front.  They give my usually flat hair a volume its never had.  I love being the girl with dreads.  I feel like they suit my personality well.  I like the people who come talk to me because of them.  I love how much my students love them.  I have a few friends who hate them, but mostly the response has been positive.  Even my parents and my conservative sister-in-law have told me they like my dreads. 

But my dreads are transforming from the tame, groomed dreads, controlled by the bands I had in the beginning, to a war zone.  I may have won the battle with the initial dreading, but I feel like I’m losing the war.  So how much more time and effort do I put in before I abandon ship?  How long to I hope this is just a dread-phase that will go away after they “mature” a bit more. 

What do I do?

Exciting Things

Saturday I got things done.  I washed my hair, cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, then started in on my history course.  While working on my history course I went through the long process of waxing and rolling my dreads.  Like I mentioned in my last blog, this rewaxing and thorough rolling takes about 3-4 hours.  So I studied and I rolled, and I watched Bones and I rolled.  It took approximately forever.  After I'd finally rolled them all, I looked in the mirror and realized that, for the first time ever, none of my dreads were sticking up.  Not one was doing its impersonation of a tree.  Finally.  It took them two weeks, but they learned to stay down.

Also on Saturday, I looked down at my legs and giggled.  I always seem to bash my knees when I climb.  Since I climb multiple times a week, my legs look pretty beat up.  I looked at my legs and thought, "Good heck!  Somebody beats me!"  But they don't.  I get beaten by rocks and occasionally concrete when I go skate.

I should go on Jerry Springer

Exciting thing number three, the most exciting of all, was last night I drove up to Salt Lake to hang out with Jeni and Chris.  There I got to meet little Nico for the first time.  I've had lots of friends have babies over the years, and I've got well over a dozen nieces and nephews, but there's something different when it's your best friend since 3rd grading telling you the "birth story," and there in your arms is the little one that caused all the trouble.  There's something different when it's the near sister you used to confide your grade school crushes on, plan high school dances with, giggle with on the marching band bus, live with in college, and whose wedding reception was in your backyard. (Not that I got to go.  That killed me.  I couldn't get work off for love nor money.)  She let me hold him, and make faces at him, and feed him, and tease him.  They're going to be great parents.  I only hope I can do as well someday.

Confession down here in the fine print:  I want one.  I really really do.  I'm not even going to bother lying to you.  I want a husband, I want my kids, I want to start a family.  Sigh.