For the past week or so I have been indulging in my past and recalling the events, some minor, some monumental, which helped shape who I am. Today as I was reading another article in Glamour about fashionable hair, I thought of the straightener I used to own when I was 16. The first one I purchased was a very big deal to me; now I no longer was a prisoner to the swarm of curls atop my scalp. I could have straight, shiny hair like all the other girls and maybe, just maybe get a boyfriend, since I was convinced that guys only dated girls who had straight hair. The world was a very biased place back then. Clips and scrunchies could never handle my thick dark locks and no one seemed to understand. People would ask me why don't I get it straightened, but no one asked them why they never got a perm. I was tired of standing out. I wanted to blend into a world of no frizz, of running my fingers through my hair without encountering the inevitable knots associated with curls. So I went on a mission that summer. Every few days I would sit in front of my mirror for two hours. Step one consisted of blow drying my soon to be sleek tresses, then I began the straightening process. It was a tough one. My hair was stubborn, and the front always looked better because I could not reach the back as well. My wavy roots never completely vanished, giving away my curly haired past. The straightener left an incriminating smell and the fact that I did not wash my hair everyday made matters worse. I thought this whole ordeal would have been so easy, that I could reassume existence as a straight haired member of society, but instead I looked like someone had place a deat cat on my head. After a month or two of this I finally gave up. Forcing my hair into submission took too much time, looked awful, and frankly, wasn't worth the trouble. My double life was over.

Near the end of the summer I accidentally left the straightener on in the bathroom, successfully melting a sponge to its scorching surface. My mother made me throw it away and although I was sad to see it go, I never replaced it. I lived out the rest of high school wishing I had not been stuck with a curse such as this one. I had my hair relaxed a few times, which eased the intensity of my curls but left my hair rather dry and dull. When I got to college, however, I looked around and noticed that no one had the same hair as I did. Instead of seeing this as a negative, I relished in it. People would remember me; the black spirals shooting out of my head were hard to miss. On the interviews I would later go on, I would stand out to potential employers. Instead of blending into the mass of new faces, I would be different, and only then did I realize that outside of high school, being different was not the end of the world. And that myth of guys only liking girls with straight hair was put to rest soon after. I realized that some guys like it straight, some like it curly, some just like girls who can be alright with themselves, and after going through life hating what I had been given, that task was getting easier and easier. One night I was walking with a friend when she told me my curls were my defining feature. I beamed. She hadn't said, "What does it look like straightened?" or "Ohmigod, I couldn't imagine having your hair." Her saying that meant people accepting me for who I was, that I was like some kind of exotic commodity. I became proud of what I have termed "my nest." No one has hair quite like it, and many a night I have witnessed my friends sitting in frustration with a curling iron in one hand and hair spray in the other, wondering why their attempts are futile. It is a problem I will never have, and their straight heads are an item I will never own, but I am okay with that.