What happens when you throw a rock into the water? An adult in my life asked me this question. It was rhetorical because he already knew the answer: Waves. He was referring to my hair. The wavy texture that develops on hair like mine after religious brushing. I never understood the point of it, having such a subservient relationship to hair I’m just going to be forced to have cut anyway. Perhaps that was one of the reasons my hair made me feel so ugly growing up.

Every month or so my aunt made me get a haircut. I said "made" because there really wasn’t any negotiation when an adult tells you to do something, you do it, and so I did. At least once a month or before birthday and holiday parties,I would be sent to the barbershop, which I also hated, I hated how they would crack jokes and bust balls, I hated how my barber would get mad at me because I wasn’t brushing my hair enough. I hated the sting of the trimmers straightening my hairline, I loved the smell of the oil sheen but hated the burn of the rubbing alcohol that was supposed to prevent razor bumps. I didn’t hate the burn because it hurt, I hated the burn because it was judgment, a test of sorts, to gauge how much of a man I was, to gauge how tough I was, everyone feels the burn but not everyone reacts the same way, what mattered was how you reacted, boys flinched at the pain, big boys remained composed. Getting a haircut wasn’t just a mission to look good it was one to prove myself, and how much more of a man I was each time I went.

“You lookin' like don’t nobody take care of you,” my aunt would tell me this as a kid before finding me a ride to the barbershop, and even as a young man, a few days before leaving $20 next to my lamp with a note that would read “Dajuan Get A Hair Cut.”

Getting my haircut felt like something I did to satisfy my aunt as someone who was responsible for me, so when I went about the world at any age, with a nearly bald head and a lineup she could be satisfied knowing that the world is aware of how well she takes care of me, as if my haircut was gold-plated sign of how good I had it. I learned that looking good, didn’t mean looking good for you, but looking good for other people. I hated how that concept ruled people, wanting to impress people is natural, but having that be the sole reason for doing something bothers me.

None of these things occurred to me as a child, it was only until I recognized the superficial reasons behind why my hair needed to be cut did the relationship I had with my body take a turn for the worse. The disdain I had for my hair and how it was regulated turned into a disdain for my body. Not the skin I live in but the blackness of it. My skin: black in pigment, my hair: black in texture, me: black and ugly. Those regulations turned into a severe sense of self-hate, while still being governed by the regulations for my hair, and how my hair should look, I became governed by internalized racism and spent the vast majority of my adolescence at war with my own blackness.

I made sure people knew I was a metal-head, I sincerely liked the music but the added bonus was that it wasn’t associated with blackness, I wore skinny jeans but made sure they didn’t sag because I didn’t want to be like the hoodrats. I didn’t like black girls because they were too ghetto, and the one girl I dated in High School wasn’t black she was Jamaican and Indian (because at the time Jamaican wasn’t black it was Jamaican). I let multiple non-black people say the word N*gger in my presence and even let an uncounted number of black jokes fly right by me. I was rebelling, I felt trapped by my blackness, by my hair, and by my skin. I wore hats ALL THE TIME, even during the summer, my favorite were beanies because that’s what the metal-heads wore and they usually weren’t black. I would fantasize about having long straight hair (which would look fucking ridiculous on me) and how much better it would make me look, how more girls would probably like me, how people wouldn’t look at me like they looked at other black kids, they would look at me and see an exception. I would be the exceptional negro, the one the white people would cheer on.

This is me in Utah in July of 2014 with a winter beanie on.

It wasn’t until about my senior year when I no longer lived with my aunt did I gain a sliver of social consciousness and was able to see that I had fallen into the trap that was racism. It worked just like a machine there were people who helped pull me out, who pushed me to recognize my identity and helped me realize that deaths of unarmed black men wasn't are far cry from what could happen to me, because their blackness was my blackness too, but it was up to me to climb out through the gears. I had to choose to accept what I couldn’t change. I learned that I shouldn’t be ashamed of my blackness and although it’s shared, my blackness starts with me. But loving my blackness meant loving all of it and even as I discarded the shame, I still hid my hair under a hat, from beanies to baseball caps, I was still concealing a part of me that I associated with blackness. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college I was able to take the hats off. The confidence didn’t come before that, it came after because love of any kind grows with time, I had to actually get used to my hair in order to love it.

I have never been blacker than I am now, I have never loved myself more than I do now, and I’ve never been more liberated than I am now. The hair that was once regulated and the hair that regulated me are now a part of my liberation and my ascension to manhood.