The Raw and Real Series: I'm thinking about straight shaving my head.

Just … skew it. Cut it off.

I am. I am. I am. I am.

Why not?

What would it be like to be totally bald? To just get rid of it? What might it be like to do something as drastic to my hair as the doctors did to my body?

Think about it: as women, we wrap a lot of our identity into our hair. Right? I mean, I LOVE my hair.

But changing it now feels like a natural extension of all of the other transformation that is happening in me.

I've done it ALL, y’all. I’ve shaved it before—twice, I think. Maybe three times. Not totally bald, but very close.

I've done the perm. Had it straight. I’ve had the blow out. The braids.

I do what Black Women do—whatever the hell we want with our hair!

So this is not about style.

This is not about right or wrong.

I just don't know who I am anymore, so of course I don't know how I want to look. I don’t know how I see myself anymore.

When I was about ten (maybe 12), my Momma cut my hair off. I’m not even sure why. But when she did it, amid all of the hate that came out of her mouth, I knew I wasn’t pretty anymore. Without my hair, I was ugly.

That was my truth.

Our hair carries stories. And right now, I don’t know my story.

Here’s what I DO know:

I’m moody as hell. Not regular moody. EXTREME moody.

Sad a lot. Tired a LOT.

And I’m angrier even more. I’m talkin’ rage angry. Zero to 150 in about 10 seconds. Spoiling for a brawl.

I’m lonely.

My hormones are on parade, and I’m all over the place. (You cannot understand the gravity of those words. #realtalk: The doggy daycare that had Happy wasn’t calling me back and I convinced myself—I’m talking for real, for real—that they were taking my puppy. That they had turned him into a drug mule. Or a sex trafficking puppy. Or they were pimping him out for somebody who was dying, and they didn't want to tell me. Now, you may be laughing, but I am dead serious when I say I got all kinds of twisted about it.)

I find it very difficult to make a decision. I’m indecisive.

I have no direction.

I’m not attached to anything. I surrender.

I just can’t figure out what I want.

I know how to survive. That’s the street in me.

But I don’t even know how to consider what I actually want. I have no practice in that. I can tell you what I DON’T want much quicker.

But my hair … what am I supposed to do with my HAIR?

What if I just let it go?

Sitting in the unknown. That’s where you’ll find me.

Telling my truths.

Venus Opal