Meeting Twigs

Split end (noun):
a. The end of a hair that has split into strands. http://www.answers.com/
b. Break caused when a hair shaft is pulled apart; Gives hair a frizzy appearance, and causes tangles. http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/hair/page.html

For the first time in my life, I’ve discovered spilt ends in my hair strands. You could not imagine my horror, no, flabbergast when I saw those “blonde” double-ends among my black locks. My gosh, I’m going to faint was my initial thought, but I figured that getting the scissors and starting to slice may be a better solution. So I started, with vengeance, to hack those stalwart “twigs” away, which have no business growing in my mane.

Oh, I was just able to find approximately seven “twigs” (well, that’s as far as my poor-sighted eyes can search), but I could not help switching to the catatonic mode after the vicious slicing and cutting. Maarte? Really. I know cultivating fearsome cooties in my head was a far worse scenario than that, but, hey, it was my first time.

I have a thing for those girls and ladies who sport their mane with those twigs. I used to experience shivers in my spine whenever I saw the twigs. You see, all my life I have taken care of my hair like it’s the most precious part of my body, even overtaking my eyes in the list of my priorities. That explains the thick eye glasses and my always sitting in front during class discussions.

Anyways, folks from my place really gave much importance about hair care and emphasized in taking care of the crowning glory. That’s how I acquired the HIV illness. Hair Is Valuable. I remember growing up being pampered by my relatives with hot oil sessions. And I’m not talking about the “Virgin Coconut Hot Oil Treatment” or any brand that you can buy in Watson’s for scary inflated prices, but I mean REAL coconut oil. We ask the boys to go climb up those thin coco branches (and pray they’ll not fall down), and to break the cocos into two so that we could carve the meat out. After that, we squeeze out milk from the meat and heat the milk until bubbles start to show up, then voila! We start our all-natural hot oil treatments.

I managed to enjoy that luxury up until I reached junior high school, when the boys turned into men who started to turn their eyes away from the aging coconut trees and concentrated on basketball (and girls) instead. I, on the other hand, also discovered other things to get busy with, and those hair pampering sessions became lesser and lesser in frequency as time passed by.
Time flew and I stepped my foot into college. Stress became a constant companion, and as you can guess, my hair went down the list of my priorities. I’m a sleep hog, so I try to get the most number of snooze that I can- even to the extent of waking up at 7:15am when my classes are at eight- to reload on energy. That leaves less time for hair care.

Every morning, I cramp all my girly bath rituals in just 30 minutes so that I could beat my professor in reaching school. Those rituals do not anymore include careful shampooing, lavish conditioning, or applying hot oil in my hair. Instead, I simply decant ample amount of shampoo or conditioner from the bottle, shove it directly to my mane, and swoosh water to my head afterwards. Afterwards, I rush to comb my wet hair, which I’m sure is a violation of the hair care principles. That would be like scything my hair strands in the chopping board. So much for hair pampering, my attendance record is at stake.

I have done this every day in the last two years, and here I am, frightened to death of finding another twig in my tresses.

And the morale of the story? Simple. When we care for something or someone, we shouldn’t let anything or anyone be a hindrance for us to continue caring for them. Not time, not ambition, not work, and not even the whole world, because if we let these get into our system, we stop thinking about those whom we care for. We even forget the fact that we cared in the first place. We stop being “humans”. We ride the flow of life and don’t remember to stop. We just take a glance if we start feeling that parts of us have slipped away, swallowed by the whirlwind. Oftentimes, some of those parts are irreplaceable (ala Beyonce) and we can just cry in vain with our pathetic loss. Yep, story of my life, err, hair.