An Ode to the End (writes)
It was a drunken night on Staten Island in the spring of 2018, sitting on a bar chair at my Aunt Michele’s house when she stuck her finger in the cowlick on the back of my head and said, “You know your hair is starting to thin a bit here, right?”. Tipsy from red wine, insecure and fuller of myself than I am now, I quickly dismissed the wisdom of the observation, with a cheap rebuttal, “Nah that’s just the spiral on my crown”. It’s been almost six years since that night, and now, just like then, she was right. I can laugh at that moment now because the beauty of hindsight is it provides 20/20 clarity. Six years later, here in Singapore, with locs raining past my shoulders and down my back, I’m saying goodbye to this part of my hair journey. In fact, by the time you’ve read this, all 44 of my locs will have been gone for a few weeks. I am not mad and no longer am I sad, for my grief finds a resting home and I release these words.
This chapter of my hair journey actually began at the end of 2017. I was an over-serious, buttoned-up 20-something still living in New York City, working an office job for CBS Sports, not yet ready for my soon-to-be new life in California. The opportunity for reinvention has been a gift I’ve learned to welcome. At this point in my life, I was ready to be done with the stuffiness of my East Coast life. As I decided it was time to leave New York, for the second time, I started growing my hair out before eventually driving across the country. For a year and a half, living in Long Beach, California, my hair grew, before I was on the run again, this time headed to San Diego, where I would be chasing my master’s degree. Two months before the move, the end of the summer in 2019, panicked and worried I wouldn’t find a job, I mistakenly cut my hair, believing the lie that a “professional” look would correlate to a job. Freeform locs had just started forming on my head, and regrettably, I cut them off. I was too worried about pacifying the lies of whiteness that surrounded me in my life during that time, both literally and figuratively. After my 2019 chop, I felt like I had once again become the thing I had tried to escape when I left New York: stuffy, buttoned up, and too concerned about white folks. This time, I was more miserable, even more tired of the façade of business professionalism, and my soul was becoming exhausted of the whiteness and white people surrounding me, in my personal life, professional life, and now academically, in grad school.
It wasn’t always like this. When I was in middle school, I had an afro, quite a big one. I had grown up seeing pictures of my Black mother with an afro during her days in high school and admired the beauty and coolness my mother always exuded. My mother, a baby boomer, used to tell me how she grew her hair out when she was younger because she loved the revolutionary, Dr. Angela Davis, who during my mother’s time, had been put on the FBI’s “top ten most wanted list”. All through middle school, I wore an afro, as an ode to my mother, and the style she used to describe of the seventies. Even in the suburbs, with annoying white classmates, I loved my hair. I’m not sure why it took me so long to grow it out again, but as I started again in the closing months of 2019, I was checked out of my job, checked out of my [then] relationship, and generally just checked out of anything that wasn’t grad school. I was ready to do whatever I wanted, and ready to be who I needed to be for myself. There was no plan, no idea of style, just an attitude of “I’m ready to do what I want”. The clean-cut version of myself had become quite boring, and I was ready to let that go.
Over these last five years, my aunt’s words have stayed in the back of my head, probably exactly where my hair was starting to thin. I think I knew even back then, this loc journey might be a last rodeo, and I feel lucky to have been given the foresight. It’s a gift to see the end of a season. I don’t know if it makes the urge to fight against inevitability any easier, but there is something about recognizing a season, and its finale. I knew however I decided to show up for myself, I wanted to show up most authentically, to be the thing(s) I always wanted to be as a kid.
My story is not special. Most people can’t look at the people they were at the start of 2020, and see the same version of themselves now. Like many others, I fell into a deep depression at the start of the pandemic. The mass scale of death, denial of said death, my engagement crumbling in front of me, a modern civil rights movement, and grad school in the midst of it all, created an anger in me that gripped me. While I grew out my hair, I lost a chunk of my beard, due to stress alopecia, but carried on. The hair on my head continued to grow, as I quit my job, lived through an election, the death of mi abuelo, the ending of my engagement, and as I continued through grad school.
My hair continued to grow, as I protested in 2020 and 2021, as I fell deeper into my depression. I trained for my first 10k, dragged through virtual classes in grad school, flew in and out of Vegas (often), and I started to twist my hair again, ready to commit to the locs I always wanted. I had always wanted locs as a kid, especially when I had my afro. As a kid, I remember asking my mom to loc my hair, but she refused. It always bothered me, but I don’t blame her. My brother and I were set to be first-generation college students, and she was doing her best to raise two Black boys in the South, trying to guide us the best she could. “No locs”, and “no piercings” were two rules I vividly remember, hilarious seeing what my brother and I have become today. While I [obviously] disagree with this perspective, looking back, I’m empathetic to her words. Now, almost 30, Memorial Day of 2021, I was determined to loc my hair, get my ears pierced, committing to everything I wanted to be as a kid.
Irony is a funny thing. My aunt who warned me about my hair, is the same person who decided to loc it for me. She gave me castor oil to tend to my hair, and I left New York that Memorial Day weekend, with fresh freeform locs in my hair and new piercings in my ears that matched my brother Chris and best friend Fred. I spent that summer, trying to find myself, and who I wanted to be. I smoked WAY too much weed, sobbed in bi-weekly Zoom therapy sessions with one of the most brilliant women I know, got new tattoos, and documented my depression through a pseudo-portrait series I started on my phone. Through and with my hair, I started to find myself, and the person I always wanted to be. I had spent so many years too worried about the lies of professionalism, and decided as an adult, I wasn’t going to center whiteness in ways I previously had.
I think that’s what made the end of this journey initially so hard. Five plus years isn’t bad, and like my cousin Jordan reminded me, “[I’ve] had a good run”. If I’m brutally honest with myself, I’ve held anxious feelings about cutting my hair. I’ve held anxious energy about visually being reminded of who I was before this journey. Cutting my locs didn’t just feel like the end of now, I felt a fear of a reminder of season’s pasts which I now have rejected. There’s a part of me that has held shame about the fact it’s taken me so long to discover myself, who I really am. I’ve been grateful to love this chapter of my life…no matter how difficult it’s been or how difficult I have made it for myself. These last five years have undoubtedly been the most consequential of my life. I’ve moved over and over, ended an engagement, finished grad school, got married, moved 9000 miles away from home, and now live on the other side of the world. My locs were with me, In the midst of my depressive years as, “I really tried to drink it away, put one in the air, dance it away, and tried to change it with my hair”. My hair has been with me through it all. Anyone with locs will tell you, that between the growth, maintenance, and frustrations that can come with the style, you form a relationship with your hair that’s quite unique. With that relationship deepening, the confidence that my depression robbed from me, slowly started restoring. My hair has served as an act of rebellion against the “professionalism” in white spaces I was taught I needed to passively navigate. My hair has been a source of pride, against the subjugation of Blackness in the spaces I had to previously operate. I remembered those feelings as a kid, but now had the literacy to identify those feelings more clearly as an adult. With my tattoos, nose ring, earrings, and locs, I’ve navigated spaces I was told, as a kid, I wouldn’t be able to enter. The validation of those accomplishments is minimal. Honoring my truth, and doing it as my most authentic self, has been a priceless gift. My locs really taught me how to leave spaces that aren’t meant for me and reject the environments that refuse to accept the fullness of my identities. Being fully seen as this version of myself has been a gift. I wasn’t always aware of how much the gift of recognition truly meant to me. It wasn’t until a summer night in 2021, smoked out, listening to neo-soul, with a woman I once loved. As I took a delicate pull from a freshly rolled joint, gently lifted, I remember Erykah Badu playing, as we watched the sunset. With messy locs, and now a thick, full beard, sitting on her balcony, she said to me, “This version of you, your hair, your beard…it looks good on you, you look free”. What a gift it is, to be seen in fuller ways than ever before. My locs gave me a gift of recognition, deep and profound self-recognition, which I have cherished over these last five years, and will carry with me forever. Days in the pandemic would wake up, even in the depths of my depression, seeing a version of myself in the mirror, sad many times, but ultimately free in ways I hadn’t fully known previously. My locs have been my partner, my shield, my pride, my crown, my identity, my home, and I’m grateful for the journey I’ve had with them.
They don't understand
What it means to me
Where we chose to go
Where we've been to know
They don't understand
What it means to me
Where we chose to go
Where we've been to know
Solange Knowles – “Don’t Touch My Hair”
I consider myself lucky. I’ve gotten to do more than I’ve ever wanted. I took my first professional portraits with my locs, cursed out the dean of my university, and got married with these locs. I’ll get to show our kids one day “Your dad used to look like this.” I have traveled to more countries than I ever could imagine, with my locs. I did a TEDx talk with my locs. I started my professional photography career with these locs. I’m grateful. Again, to see the end is a gift. The end of this journey isn’t just about cutting my locs, but the end of a season in which my locs were with me as I figured out so much. A visual representation of a season I will always be very much grateful for. It’s such a cliché to say that grieving is an expression of love. As I wrote this, I found myself in grief knowing this chapter was closing. With my locs, I became proud of my survival and proud of the love I learned to have for myself…love taught to me, love that took me too long to figure out. I’m grateful for discovery, no matter how late I perceive its arrival to be.
All things must come to an end. This current ending of my loc journey reminds me of that fact. I can’t say I was ready, but when are we ever truly ready to face the end of a season? Simply put, for me, there really isn’t any other choice. Life makes decisions for us all the time, and I rather recognize this new season, than wind up in an intervention like “Bluto” from “Southside”. This ending brought a specific sadness, and writing this, I’m choosing to honor those feelings. I know whatever comes next, the journey is forever different because of the end of my loc journey. Who I am now, is more than my locs, more than my hair…I’m grateful for my locs helping me learn that lesson. This new season brings a lack of recognition I once had. Many here in Singapore, who have only known me one way, have needed double and triple takes to recognize me now. Amid this new chapter, I’m reminded mementos from the past aren’t always a bad thing. When I shaved my head, my wife said, “I recognize this face from my friend made all those years ago, when we first met”. One of my best friends Fred said, “There’s my buddy I’ve always remembered”, and another best friend of mine Jim told me “It’s a reminder of Upstate days, even if your hairline is a little different now” (thanks Jim). I am grateful. The invitation of reinvention is a gift. This new invitation, as always, is one I am lucky to accept.
