Dreaded: Part 2 - Locked Up

Part 1 got into the nitty gritty and possibly mundane details of dreads. Sorry not sorry? People asked all the time (and some still do), "how did you dread your hair?" Well, now there's a post.

In addition to getting dreads I met some challenges and came up against high expectations of what they would look like. It wasn't the most positive take, but I shared some actual struggles and for any of you wanting dreads—heads up—they're quite a bit of work.

Here in Part 2, "Locked Up" I'll share the beautiful side of being a dready, how going to South Sudan made things real, and also about the misconceptions people have about dreads and how that affected their perception of me. I'll get to all of that in a minute.

First, THIS.

Photo by Natalie Roush

Photo by Natalie Roush

 Ahhhhh.

Yeah, so I loved my dreads. At times they annoyed me but all the while dreads became a part of me.

It did take some time for my dreads to lock up, meaning there were no "loose hairs" in the dreads, and I'd say I noticed a big difference around month 6/7. My job in South Africa allowed me some travel around Sub-Saharan Africa and one of my more memorable trips was to South Sudan.

I'll spare you all the gory details, though I'm sure you'd find the story fascinating, but due to circumstances of heat and taking a shower almost twice a day to keep "cool," my dreads started to lock up quite quickly. In fact, they shrunk. As dreads lock up, the hair appears to "shrink" up. Anyways, I spent almost 21 days in South Sudan and as I was making my journey back down to South Africa I realized my dreads had actually locked up together. This is completely normal, but basically they started to pair off and I had to literally rip them apart. It's as intense as it sounds, but maybe not as painful.

When I came back to South Africa and normalized, I didn't wrap them as much as I'd done before and I began to wash them a little less. At a year, they appeared to be dreads.

I noticed I got more attention when I let my dreads down and pulled my non-dreaded hair up. Black South Africans loved that my hair was dreaded and many white South Africans thought they were cool, but seemed a little more reserved in their reactions. When I came back to the states most Americans reacted much like the white South Africans. Interested but reserved.

I also realized my dreads, if showing, were the first thing people noticed and the last thing they'd forget about me. I mean, I sat at the back of the class and never interacted with my professor and one day I wore my hair back and went up to ask a question and he interrupted me and said, "Wait a minute, did you cut your dreads??" To my shock, 1) we'd never interacted, and 2) he was invested in my dreads??, I simply turned my head around and showed him my dreads. He let out a sigh of relief.

Sometimes my dreads became a focal factor in a first impression. I had a few people in job interviews tell me, "I like your vibe," eyeing my dreads and continuing, "I think you'd be a good fit here." Others said, "holy sh*t, you have dreads? That's awesome." As if not getting up in the morning wasn't awesome? For others who didn't know me, they wondered about my hygiene, if I smoked, and why I'd chosen an almost radical way to style my hair.

These hygiene and smoking misconceptions were way off. In fact, while I had a wedding in Colorado where marijuana is legal, I've never smoked weed in my entire life. Not that you needed that information. I've just never had the desire nor wanted to. Having dreads, many people asked if I wanted to smoke or assumed I did... so there's that.

As for the hygiene I can assure you I showered all the time. It's true, I washed my dreads less the more mature my dreads got, but my hygiene did not take a hit because I dreaded my hair.

I think what surprised people the most about me was the fact that I didn't seem to fit the "dread mold." Whatever that meant? I was at seminary. I have tattoos. I wear cowboy boots sometimes. I am both soft and rough around the edges and I did not allow my dreads to define my choices in life. Yeah, there are parts about me that seem very earthy, like my love of rock climbing, yoga and veggies, but it wasn't because I had dreads that I did those things.

I didn't want my "identifier" to become my identity, but somehow people thought it was the same thing.

What I really desired out of dreads was the chance to do something different and to be confident in doing so. Dreads weren't for others or for the attention, contrary to some beliefs, they were for me. I didn't know what my life would look like with dreads and I didn't know what it would look like post-dreads. But I'll save that for Part 3.

Also this...

An actual representation of the relationship between my dreaded/non-dreaded hair. Separate and free. Light and heavy. Cooperative and uncooperative. Peaceful and messy. Just like me.