it's been just under 10 years since i cut my locs off and everyday i miss them. i tried to re-grow them here in missouri soon after we got here but that didn't take. mostly it was because of the loctician herself but it was also that my hair doesn't do the normal loc'ing process very well.

you see, most people start their locs with what call 'palm rolling' which is just rolling the hair in our palms until it's a smooth loc of hair. if you have all 4c hair, that likely works great. but for me with a hodge-podge collection of different hair types, especiall the 3c around the hairline, this method is useless because after i shower and sleep for one night, it's all unravelled.

in fact, when i first started my locs, it was quite the effort. i had to visit the loctician every two weeks and finally when it was clear that that was not going to work, they had to wrap my locs with hair extensions just to keep it from unravelling in the weeks between visits. it took about a year for my locs to strt behaving and even then, 10 years in, the back at the nape never really stayed loc'd. so ... palm-rolling was a bad choice and the fact that this loctician was incapable of considering other options just made me more frustrated than anything else. (it didn't help that she thought it was dog hair that caused an allergic reaction and not the dander and wouldn't listen when i tried to tell her so).

so ... i am in a perpetual twa these days. which ... works out well since my health is no longer what it used to be...

you see, i had been getting worse over the years: - constantly tired, but unable to sleep - inexplicable pain in my hips, shoulders, and wrists - growing inability to grasp and hold anything for any length of time - after any period of activity, i would sleep for hours and just be unable to do much of anything - increasing fogginess and an inability to remember even basic things like names, dates, etc.

at first, the doctors just told me to exercise more and get more sleep. put away my phone at nights. eat better. which ... is standard talk when women complain of pain and fatigue. exercise made it worse. phone or not, i was still unable to sleep unless completely fatigued. and i would forget things a minute after i heard them.

eventually, i learned about me/cfs... and everything fit... except my [pcm] refused to consider it as anything other than a diagnosis of exclusion which me/cfs no longer is. she sent me all over the place to get tests when one simple conversation would have made it crystal clear to her what this was.

the defining symptom of me/cfs is something called pem or 'post-exertional malaise'. which is exactly why any kind of exercise would cause me to crash. after my sleep study came back extra normal, she finally agreed that yes indeed it seems i have me/cfs ... which ... we could have saved a lot of time and expense if we had just had a chat about pem and what the defining features were. (btw: the nasa test is another way to diagnose me/cfs)

anyway ... with all that, it just made sense to keep my hair short now. i can't hold my hands above my head long enough to even wash it when it's short much less if it was loc'd and long. and so ... since it was curling around my glasses and over my ears, i figured i should give it a trim. actually been needing to do it for weeks now -ever since i got back from jamaica .. but last night... last night was the night. and so, i cut it.

yay me?