It's not natural

So it's another early morning net session for me. The last week has been full of 5am bed times (not out of choice), sickingly tired mornings, and thoughts in my head that are so loud, sometimes my ear drums feel like they are going to burst.

Did I mention that I'm travelling around the world for 8 months in 3 weeks?

Or

That this is also time I choose to wean my self off sleep medication, and then a few weeks later, wean myself off anti-depressents. so that I can see the colours of the world, I've paid a fortune to go and see, without the ever pervasive fog that comes with taking mood alterating substances.

-The type you get on prescription from your gp and the type you buy on the street corner.Trust me, I know both.

Really, other than the sleeplessness (8 years and counting), and the added stress and anxiety this is adding, at what is probably one of the most inspirational times of my life.

I'm happy. In love, and planning for my future, and contemplating death. Just not as often as I used to.

I guess the thing that has changed the most, and the thing I'm struggling to reconcile myself with the most. Is me. The way I look. Because like most people, the way I looked is inextricably linked in with the way I feel.

In the last 6 months, I have begun a process of stripping down the synthetic 'add ons' that have helped me cultivate the look of stylish diva, in a never ending assortment of ever riduclously high heels. Flash eye lashes, acyrlic nails, hair from an indian woman.

You now that typical 'put together' look so prevelant on any high street, were there is a high head count of the black dispora, or any high street for that matter.

Weave on-check
false nails-check
false eye lashes-check
mac make-up-check

And it's not like I'm saying there is anything wrong with the polished, often elegant look all those (plug ins), can offer.

It's just

a. There time consuming and take an awful lot of up keep
a1. I don't even want to count the hours I have spent in hair and nails shops, promising never to return to this circus-  until the next time my weave was getting a bit loose...

b.It's expensive, and unlike some who style their hair with what naturally grew from their head. I have to go to some afrocentric high street and purchase temple hair (If i'm feeling flush), from some poor Indian woman given in devotion

c. It hinders you from excersising too much- as everyone knows a sweated out weave smells like nothing else. Just plain foul

d. and finally, it just aint real. It's not the way god, yes I said it, GOD, created me.

Let also add in, that things like sexual relations can get a bit restrictive when one of your favourite lines is;



" you better not touch my hair"

or

" hold on, let me just take off my eye lashes, this glue is killing me".

I've said both those and far worse.

But in my grown up analysis, it some way dishonours the prefection that God has made me, even in my imperfections.

However, for all my self rightious rambling. I'm still struggling to come to terms with how the shedding of these oucutrements has changed the way I look.

Let me explain

after my near shoulder length, natural non-permed hair started falling out in strands, clumps and from the roots. I had to take a good look at my beauty  regime.

a. I have long hair, but it never saw the light of day. Except for the 3 hour break i took to go from one weave to another. Or make that 8 hours, depending on what circus(hairdressers), I went to

b.it's now so excessively dry, fragile and chopped up from all the coarse string used in the weaves, that I look like I'm getting early onset alopecia

c.my *real* nails are so paper thin, I can see the blood supply through the thin layer of nail left, and quite often see the real thing (blood), when said nail splits straight down the middle. If you've had that happen you will know that it fucking kills

d. I'm starting to loose the eye lashes I started with, from inappropriate removal, and over zealous application. Without them, my eyes now look like too piss holes in the snow,

and did I mention all this up keep was bloody expensive.

So....

to cut a long story kinda short. I started to shed. Layer, by layer. and now I'm left with just me. My 'thinning' natural hair, in a few debatable dreadlocks. A few too many pounds on the ass, mid-drift and jaw line from the love diet. And a distinctive lack of confidence, that has made me stay home from going to places that I would have usually gone. Scared to see people I used to see, when I looked,  ermm... normal.

Its a hard one. Learning to love and accept yourself the way you actually are, you know.. like natural. Especially when you have been fake so long, you kind of forgot what that was.

I also have to say, that in going through this transition, I have been blessed enough to have a man who loves me in every variety of butt ugly, and glamorous that I come in. Think the former, more,  than the latter.

When I let him, he loves on me, and lets me know he finds me beautiful. That he finds my newly regained curves, something enticing.*the the supermodel bitch that lives in head, always tells me he's lying*

That he enjoys being able to run his hands through my real hair *what there is left of it*, and not get his fingers stuck in the weave-on threads.

That he doesn't mind if he comes home, and I'm wearing leopard print leggings, odd socks, a head scarf and one of his t-shirts.

He joy towards me, shows me that he accepts me.Just as I am, even if sometimes, I struggle to believe him or except his compliments, and especially when I don't feel that way towards myself.

His appreciation of me, has made this transition period, bitter sweet, I want to be the hot, sexy, outgoing, well dressed, slim, fierce women he fell in love with.

I seem to be evolving into a travelling, dreadlocked, padded in the ass,hippy!

 Or maybe I was always this, and it was the other persona that was a lie...

All I know is that, right now, even if it ain't always pretty.

It's 100% natural, and I like it that way.

Thanks for reading.xx