"You hair breaking… you know?"
"Huh?"!!!
I looked up at my hairdresser’s frowning face. I'd been struggling all afternoon to understand his thick Jamaican accent, and was not sure I'd heard him right.
So he repeated again more slowly
"You...hair...breaking"
"What? Where?"
I thought he'd point out one strand; instead he went...
"Here... here... here... this... whole sekshan (section)... here… here..."
I turned around, as if to see the back of my head more clearly and when this manoeuvre failed, sat in silence, digesting this information.
How can my hair break? I have dreadlocks, which means that it hasn't seen a comb or brush in almost 9 months. I always wear it loose and apart from moisturising, I hardly ever touch my hair!
When I could speak again, I asked,
"What causes breakage?"
"Donknow... could be you pregnant or could be genetic, or maybe you stress?"
Then he went on to talk about bright shiny bald patches, and how women can get them too.
"You mean I've got bald patches???"
"No, it not that bad"
Well, unless I've had the Immaculate Conception that rules out pregnancy!
Genetics - my family has full heads of hair. Bald patches if any, appear at the top and not at the back of the head (where most of the breakage is)
So that only leaves stress
What am I stressed about?
I started mentally listing all the stuff I was anxious about, and had to stop because the list was growing. Then I started feeling guilty because the Bible says in Philippians 4 that we should not to be anxious about anything, but give our concerns to God in prayer and thanksgiving. So that’s another area of personal failure- an inability to let go of worry.
Perhaps I don’t trust that God will sort stuff out. Most of my worries are caused by my fear of confrontation, procrastination, poor financial management, indiscipline. I am the root cause of all my problems and the only way to deal with it is to make positive changes on myself.
But to do this, I need moral support; just like the time at University when I was too scared to sign off at the Library because I’d lost one of my library cards. The implications of this were that the Library Supervisor could either refuse to sign me off (thus affecting my Graduation) or charge me a fee which I couldn’t pay. I remember agonising all week about it, imagining the worst case scenario, until Joanne Aniku offered to come along with me to the Library. She didn’t do anything else apart from holding and giving my hand a reassuring squeeze, but I took courage from the fact that she was there. When we got to the Library it turned out not to be a big deal, the missing library card was not even mentioned and it was all over in 5 minutes. It’s been 10 years but I’ll never forget what Joanne did for me and I owe her big time.
I give off the impression that I’m independent and self sufficient. But I’m not really. It takes a lot out of me emotionally to deal with things, and I can’t rely on God to hold my hand because He cannot; He is not a physical being!
I’m struggling in London because I don’t have a support network. My sister is not talking to me, my brother prefers not to get involved and I don’t have any close friends near by who can take time out to be there. They all live so far away
So I guess I am stressed and now my hair is breaking!!!
