Journey | My Loc Journey
by Gail Mitchell
I don’t know the exact specifics of when or where I made my decision to wear locs. But it’s been through a lot of years of inspiration and contemplation.
I go back to my pre-teen years and remember getting my hair pressed. I remember feeling the heat of the hot comb as my mother passed it through my strands, hoping that I wouldn’t get accidentally burned in the “kitchen”. I kept still as a statue, knowing that any movement would leave a permanent impression. The process was long, rewarding but fleeting: a good day of play would make hair pressed to perfection turn into a huge afro.
Growing tired of seeing me “sweat” out my style, my mom tried a relaxer: the French Perm. It looked good, for a while. Then I noticed how often I had to keep getting a relaxer to keep my hair looking good. As Chris Rock said in his movie Good Hair, I began my journey of chasing the “creamy crack”.
Retouch after retouch. Product after product. Stylist after stylist. No matter what I did, I was forever chasing the myth of bone straight hair for as long as possible. I wore my hair relaxed for twenty-five years. Throughout those years, my hair grew somewhat longer, but it never got past a certain point. It always broke off in the back. My scalp grew increasingly sensitive: by the end of my relaxer days, I was using the sensitive scalp formula, and I grew increasingly allergic to certain product ingredients. To this day, I don’t know what those certain ingredients are.
I remember that I admired locs over the years. I didn’t think much about them until recently. In the back of my mind, I always said I’d try them after I retired. I guess I shelved the idea of locs for the distant future.
As I grew older, I noticed that natural hair had begun to take centerstage. I embraced my natural texture by slowly growing out my relaxer and wearing a curly style. I dared to do the big chop myself. Some of my friends were stunned and amazed. They didn’t know what had gotten into me.
I wore a natural for about year. I was happy with the style, but I literally waited for it to grow longer. I twisted it to get even more of a curly texture, but that was a lot of work. I finally found some products that moisturized and brought out my natural texture. However, I missed having longer hair. It didn’t need to be bone straight, just longer.
I finally began to look at locs more and more and admiring the style. For some reason they seemed out of reach. Maybe someday. Not yet. I’ll wait. Excuse after excuse played out in my head. I finally said to myself, “What am I waiting for?” I only have one lifetime. I called a natural stylist who said that they could start my locs with a two-strand twist.
Well, I had my length, but most of it wasn’t my own. The stylist was going to slowly grow my locs out by loc stitching the new growth, keeping the twists, then eventually cutting them off. However, I didn’t know that, and I hated having the two textures in my hair: one loc’d and one synthetic. I went through the “big chop” again in a manner of speaking: I took down the twists and went to a loctician. It took me all night and most of the next day to meticulously take each strand down. The results (after two days) were short, starter locs. It will be about 4 years since that day as of this writing.
Today my locs are past my shoulders, and I happily await the promise of even more growth. I have never had a bad hair day. I haven’t looked back.
My loc journey has been smooth, once I worked the kinks out—not in my hair but in my head (as Marcus Garvey so eloquently pleaded). I’m finally living the hair of my dreams.