Chaos is an angel who fell in love with a demon. – Christopher Poindexter
Love can be a dangerous thing. It’s crazy how easy it is to let someone or something creep into your life because you think that person or that thing is totally harmless. Before you know it, things get out of control and you find yourself regretting you ever let them in to start with…
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The days were becoming much colder and soon I would need to dust off my winter jacket and make it my daily attire. This jacket was one of a kind and one of my most prized possessions. It was a lovely cobalt blue and double-breasted but it was not designed to be worn buttoned up. It was also quilted on the inside and looked super stylish when simply thrown over a pair of jeans, jumper and trainers. But for the colder months I would definitely need to wear a scarf with it.
I had this really lovely chunky grey scarf that would work well but Mayana had claimed it as her ‘blankie’ a long time ago. So rather than engage in a tug of War with a borderline teenage toddler whose got her reality all mixed up cos I know the scarf is clearly mine, I decided I would let her have it and just get myself a new scarf.
I found the perfect replacement on Ebay for a bargain price under a tenner. I had seen similar scarves at TK Maxx going for sixty quid. Sixty quid! God absolutely forbid it! I told myself. To spend that amount on a scarf was just inconceivable.
Anyways it was a chunky tartan scarf closely resembling Mayana’s alleged blankie. It was available in grey too but to make sure no mistakes were made about whose scarf it was I got the multi coloured blue/red version so it also blended well with my jacket.
When it arrived, I was so excited and wasted no time opening it. It was beautiful! As beautiful in reality as the images on Ebay. I tried it on, wrapping it all around my neck and fell in love with it instantaneously. It looked right and felt right too! Before long, this scarf became my new favourite. Little did I know this scarf had a dangerous agenda.
I wore it every single day but started to notice it did not get along with my hair – at all. Although it was keeping me really warm, it was becoming overbearing for my hair. My hair did nothing but complain about it. I was getting a lot of ‘oh I’m chokinggg!’ or ‘oh I can’t breatheeee!’ with coughs and wheezing for effects. Initially, I thought my hair was being overly dramatic as a result of jealousy. I told it to learn to get along with the scarf cos the scarf was going nowhere.
From that point on, my hair went quiet. I thought I had been successful in making them get along. Surely if that big mouth wasn’t running everything was okay, right? Wrong! Everything was not okay but it took me some time to realise it as I was so busy. Swamped with work. My days were merging into one. Could not tell the difference between a Monday and a Sunday. I was constantly exhausted and was just so grateful I had a bed to come home to and my scarf, my little trooper, protecting me day and night, from the harsh cold winter. The bond with my scarf was growing stronger.
Then, one day, as I was getting ready for work I looked in the mirror and noticed something strange. Why was the bottom half of my locs as white as snow. I looked a little closer. Yep, there were loads of white bits in my hair. Oh my gosh! I took a sharp breath in as it dawned on me. Lint! It was lint and it was all over my hair! Why didn’t I notice it before? I asked myself. It was like a magic trick. Now I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. And I knew exactly where it had come from too. The scarf. The damn scarf. Getting all smoochy-smoochy with me whilst it was planning to take over my locs! Shake my head. Totally despicable. To think I let this little demon into our lives???
Great. Now I owed my hair an apology.
‘Oh no no no, honey,’ came the attitude. ‘Don’t apologise, you need to fix it!’
And fix it, I was even though I wasn’t sure exactly how. The problem was, I wasn’t just dealing with surface lint that was just gently perched on top my locs. Dealing with that was easy. You just need to catch it in the first few days. No, I was dealing with the mother of all lint. The type that has had plenty of time to make itself at home in my locs. I cannot believe I was too busy to notice my scarf had been competing for my affection and trying to smother my locs and ultimately become my locs. It had been left unattended for so long it found it’s way in and embedded itself quite comfortably. It was going to be a nightmare to get rid of.
This would never have happened if I showed my hair that little bit more love and affection, I thought to myself. Over the last few years since I started my locs, our relationship has really evolved. But not quite the way I would have imagined. I find I’ve become more of the neglecting lover and my hair has become the tolerant one. What. A. Shambles. Nearly eight years of the baddest romance and this is what it’s come to?
Truth was that I was the only person responsible for giving my locs true TLC. Nobody else but me. And that TLC included standing in front of the mirror for God knows how long to pick out the lint from my locs one by one.
So that’s what I did. Pick out lint one by one. Ah! I promise you it was painful and not an activity I would recomend to anyone. So do yourself a favour and protect your locs from lint. After picking out as much as I could with my bare fingers and using a pair of scissors to decapitate the tips off some locs where the lint had totally infested, I washed my hair. The results were visibly clear. My locs looked almost brand new. I was pleased with myself. They were not all gone though and I would definitely need to go through the process again at least one more time to get the rest out.
But in the end, this has really taught me how dangerous something as innocent looking as a scarf can wreak havoc to my hair. My locs are not high maintenance at all, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy to neglect them sometimes. But things were going to be different now. I will be keeping a sharp eye out and catching every lint before it gets a chance to settle in my hair. Religiously wrapping my hair with my satin scarf at night and putting my hair in a pony tail anytime I needed to wear my scarf. Trust me. I would do anything for love – if it means avoiding lint picking! Seriously. Never again!
Happy Valentines all you lovers and self lovers too!
Peace n Love ❤️✌️
Cocoa
Image credit: Ylanite Koppens