when you walked into my world i didn’t think twice.  i figured you would walk out just as quickly as any of the others that tried to orbit my universe…

thought you might be entertaining for a short time but in the end wouldn’t count for more than a good time!

mercy me, things have changed…now you don’t orbit my universe but instead have become the moon that i search for in the dark.

when i’m with you now its not just about that “good time.” i want to be by your side during the good, the bad and all times in between…

how? when? why?

where? where do we go from here?

i’ve guarded my heart behind wall after wall yet somehow when you entered my life the walls crumbled down without you even trying…how is that possible?

how can my heart trust you when it has rarely trusted before? what makes you stand apart from those that could never get passed the walls?

do you even care? ok, that wasn’t fair. i know that you care. but the question i guess is how much do you care…or more specifically do you care only because you don’t want to see me hurt? or do you care because a part of me has reached and touched your soul as you have mine?

am i a fool for imagining what our future can be? am i a fool because there is no one that i would rather wake up next to every morning. no one that i can imagine fathering my children other than you?

is this all just too much for you? did i overstep that invisible line that you and i are not supposed to cross? did i just add a new layer of stress to your already stressful world? please know that was never my intention.

i simply wanted to send you love on this day of love…hallmark or not…

anyone that knows a woman of color knows that much of her life is spent worrying about her hair.  i mean, we can control most things in our lives…careers, homes, men, clothes, weight (to an extent) but our hair! for most women of color it has a mind of its own. 

hair can tell a lot about how a woman is feeling.  i remember a few years ago reading Bulletproof Diva…a book all about hair! today i’m sitting here realizing that like samson a woman’s power lies in her hair.  calm down ladies…that doesn’t mean that those with the longest hair wield the most power.  it simply means that our hair can give us the courage to do anything we put our minds toward.

i bet every woman that reads this can remember her first professional haircut.  mine?  i must have been around seven.  i had this really long beautiful hair that hung down my back.  my mom used to set it in rollers at night so i never realized i had curly hair until i got older.  either way i remember sitting in the chair and when they put the scissors to my hair i felt nauseas.  i cried as i watched them cut away inches that were once connected to me.

then there’s the first time we decide to cut our hair on our own…now most of the ladies know there was that time when you stood infront of the mirror and decided that you no longer like the hair looking back at you.  you went and got some scissors and snip snip…it landed in the bathroom sink. 

then the wait begins…the wait for it to grow back.  for the first few weeks of the new look you love it.  the compliments are everywhere.  everytime you look in the mirror you see the new you looking back. 

then comes the point when you have to decide to keep the new look or to let it grow out.  that’s where the diva is right now.

a few months ago i walked into my regular salon for a normal wash and set.  just one of the tortures us women have to go through to keep our hair looking stunning.  you know after the real good head massage that you get from the wash you get your hair pulled into rollers to bake under the dryer for 45 min to an hour.  then once you get pulled from the hot seat you sit there as the beautician fires up the blower and aims at your scalp.  this torture lasts another 15 minutes or so (depending on the length of your hair).  once this is done you decide if you will wear it out or have it wrapped to protect it from the forces of the weather.

either way, back to my story…i walk into the salon for my wash and set.  when i see my beautician all of a sudden its like someone takes over my thoughts because the next thing that is happening is me telling her i want my hair cut.  and i’m not talking about the ends getting trimmed.  no, i said i want the tattoo on my neck to show!

i walked out of there not only with a new look but feeling like a new person.  that was almost 3 months ago.  since then i have gotten my hair cut two more times to keep the new look fresh.  each time i went a lil shorter.  since the last time (right before the new year)i have been asking myself if i want to keep the new look.  even now when i look in the mirror i’m not sure that its me i see.  i have about another week or so to decide if the short hair is staying or going.  i’ll be due for a trim around then.  who knows maybe this time next year i’ll be keeping warm wrapped in my hair as it flows down my back once again or maybe i’ll be trying to keep my newly bald head warm…guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

this might sound strange to some but i know that most of the women reading this can relate.  why is it that for us so much of who we are comes from our hair?  i have been all over the world in all types of settings and one thing that never fails to surprise me is that when you get a group of women of color together somehow, someway the conversation goes to hair. 

so i am opening a dialogue here and now…feel free to chime in…hair!  how important is it to you?