All About Braids

People constantly ask me questions about braids since I've spent about 30% of the last decade with my hair that way. The questions are usually innocent but sometimes naive and slightly insulting.

Ask anyone with an afro or any king of curly hair (no, not that wavy type that everyone has but real curls) and they will tell you that touching their hair is a complete no-no. If you wouldn't go up to a middle class white male with mainstream hair and ask to touch his hair then don't do it to others. Hell, just live by the rule that unless invited in gold embossed writing, don't touch any part of another person.

It isn't always insulting and it is sweet that every second day, someone exclaims how beautiful my hair is. Being different is fine and has its consequences. One them is answering all the questions there are about braided hair. Here are the most common queries.

Does it hurt? It looks painful.
The way my hairdresser braids my hair involves plaiting in synthetic hair (oh, shock horror) in to my hair from the base. She takes a small amount of my hair and plaits in about ten times that amount of hair in to one braid.

The first time you get braids, your scalp will be sore. If it isn't, the braids are not in tight enough and will not last. How long they last is another question. Each consecutive time you get your braids in, it doesn't hurt. At least not for me. I believe I have an average pain threshold.

When I say hurts, it is like a bruise. The first night you sleep on them, it can be quite uncomfortable but the second night they loosen and it is fine. That was so long ago for me that I might have forgotten how painful it was but I don't seem to remember it being awful.

Simple answer is: Yes, the first time.

Do you wash it?
First of all, don't call my hair "it." That's not very polite. We aren't discussing a new puppy or a crushed velvet jacket.

Yes, I wash my braids just like I wash my non-braided hair. There is a lot more shampoo and conditioner used as the hair mass is more but the ritual of washing is the same.

The braids stay in and are not undone each time I want to wash them. That is a common extension question.

Simple answer is: I wash it the same as I would my normal hair.

How long does it last?
This is a question that is subjective and depends on the braidee (yeah, I made that word up). My braids are put in very tightly and easily last 2-3 months. In that time, they will not be undone. Unplaiting a braid will usually destroy the braid completely so they stay in the whole 2-3 months.

The question should be When do you take them out? The answer to that is that it depends on how fast your hair grows. As your normal hair grows the braid will move away from the scalp. Certain kinds of hair products and pulling on the braid when washing it can result in the braid slipping off the hair. Even the way you sleep on your hair at night can effect the braid and make it loosen. All of this adds up to how long before you need to remove it.

Simple answer is: Anywhere from 1 to 3 months.

Can I touch your braids?
Huh! That was a test. Go back and read the introduction. No, you can not touch my hair.


I hope that helps answer your questions about braids. If you have anymore, let me know but I'll expect a cup of coffee in response.

Dealing with Rejection

This appeared on Facebook a week ago. It resounded with me as this is my one triggers that I still work on dealing with.

This mental conversation tool has been very effective in the the last week that I've been using it.

"
How to deal with rejection:

1. Do you want something you don't have? - Yes.
2. Did you get what wanted? - No
3. OK - Nothing has changed then. You are exactly where you were before you decided you wanted this thing.
4. Were you OK when you didn't have it? - Yes, I was RAD!
5. Excellent... moving right along then.

"

Soul Mates

I will quote anyone if they help argue my point. In this case, it is Samantha in Sex and the City 2. Carrie compliments her for not dumping her friends and going off with a handsome man. She laughs a haughty laugh and says something about how they worked out long ago that men and babies don't matter because the four of them are soul mates.

It wasn't until I heard that a second time that I realized that I have soul mates. People who fill in the cracks when we are are together and make everything feel complete and whole again. People who act as scaffolding until we can hold ourselves up.

There is a corny story that talks of people existing as a perfect vase long ago. One day, the vase shattered in to many tiny pieces. In time as we live and are reborn, we will find the pieces that fit in to us and make us whole again. They are our soul mates.

Do I believe it? Yes, to an extent the idea is good. There are people everywhere but only a few that we fit in to and them in to us. We may travel a million paths and never find that one or few people who make us feel complete. Those who we didn't know were missing until they appeared. Not something we lack that is fulfilled but something that compliments and increases who we already are.

So often, life is either a compromise to accept people in to our lives or a series of shut doors to ensure we don't let the wrong people in. It may even become the case that we reject so many people by default that we don't let certain _right_ people in. I don't believe this is the case with so-called soul mates.

If someone is meant to be in your life then it doesn't matter if they come along too late or too under the radar to register at first because they will continue to reappear until one of you realises.

Is this the same as 'true love' and 'forever friends'? No. I'm not sure those exist. They are fluffy concepts wrapped in Hallmark and coated with pink fairy floss.

You laugh and say soul mates are the same thing. Maybe I'm aging and becoming more idealistic but I'm not convinced. There is too much evidence in my life that says that not making early sacrifices will result in true friendship found. It's a combination of waiting, trusting, not trying and always being yourself. Then when you find it, there is no real effort required to allow it to happen. It simply works. It makes sense. It is easy.

My only active advice is to not let it go. Hold on to it as other forces will surely push to re-sever. Not in a way that forces it because that can cause stress to but more in a way that is conscious and mindful of it's value.

Value the valuable. Somethings lost are wounds we my never recover from. At least for a few more lives, when we attempt to find them again.

Your style is you

People talk about style as though it is something that you can go out and buy. An acquirable commodity that will appear if you follow a recipe in a fashion magazine. An emulation of the hottest star.

Style is none of those things.

Style is the ability to find a look that compliments your character and expresses who you are.

It is a personal thing. A me thing. A comfortable thing.

When you feel at ease in your clothes and don't trip on your shoes, you are there. Just be yourself and dress in what makes you feel good. That is your style.

Your style is you.

Momentus Moments

When I arrived in Darwin, I unpacked all my computer gear first. Laptops, hard drives, routers, hubs, routers, modems, gaming consoles, hand-held games devices and everything else collected over years of geekiness. With that came the rats nest of cables for networks, power and machine to machine connectivity.

With all the spare time that I had ahead of me, I decided to sort stuff out and re-establish that level of order that only someone with OCD can truly understand. Before life went to poo, I was very ordered and organised. There was a place or everything and a moment for it all to exist in. Then

and... well, read all my previous posts if you missed it.

On Friday the 30th of July, I went upstairs, dug out and dusted off my Apple Time Capsule. For those who don't know, it's purpose is to act as a drive to backup my Mac every few hour or so. That way, if any of my devices fail then I have an easy to restore backup. In the past, it has saved my electronic soul on a few occasions. Setting up new machines has been a breezy dreamy chocolate-coated easy occasion.

Who cares? I do. There was this huge mental block there. Something that started when I arrived at my Mum's house and continued for a long seven months. I just didn't have the get up and go to get up and go and set the damn Time Capsule up. It seemed so hard and impossible at the best of times. Of course, I knew it would take me plugging in the power and an Ethernet cable and that was it. Oh yeah, and turning on the Time Machine software on my laptop. How hard is that?

With my past state of mind, it seemed heavier than a train to lift; tougher than a mountain to move; and harder than water to breathe.

I did it though.

Damn, that's a huge achievement. I celebrate all the good things that happen these days. This is one of those moments when it hits you

that you've changed... recovered... healed to the point of usefulness again. It has been a long time coming.


Take that depression! Take that ex-husband! Take that world!

Suicide is Painless

On this blog, I have explained a lot of the thinking involved in what has been the hellish and amazing journey through and hopefully out of my clinical depression. You will always hear me refer to it as "my depression" because it is completely intrinsic and can be lived through and overcome by just one person, and that is me. Aid is available and mostly welcomed but the final say in all of this is mine. This is a tug-of-war between My Depression and I.

Most battles are won by me, these days. However, the war wages on.

In this life, I am gifted with eternal optimism and unwavering confidence except when the chemicals in my brain decide they will make me feel something else and be someone else. There are people on this planet who may never see all the light and beauty in the world, for even one moment in their life. There are those who constantly doubt their worth, meaning and purpose. Some believe they have none of those things. That saddens me because from as far back as I can recall, I have always felt my life has meaning and that my existence is to add to the collective well-being of those around me. I am NOT only here to add to entropy.

This is a level of confidence that is not based in arrogance. In fact, arrogance is a lack of confidence that manifests as insecurity negated by outward superiority. True confidence is not pushing others down or even seeing people as being in a different sphere to you, but instead it is the ability to know who you are and be ok with whatever that is. That does not mean never growing and thinking you know all there is to know. Those who are "too cool for school" often aren't. Their facade of strength betrays their obvious weakness and self-awareness of their own flaws. Fractures in your character either define you or give you something to work towards fixing. If we were born perfect and all knowing, what fun would that be?

Be careful not to believe everything that those around you portray. In the end, life is a play as ol' Will proclaimed.

Now, on to that self-inflicted certainty.

When the path you walk is straight and narrow, there is no reason to doubt that it will always be so. The yellow bricks will endlessly shine, glisten and call to you to follow. Life is sunshine and frangipanis until the horizon and surely passed it. The best thing about happiness is that you forget that it ever wasn't there. Happiness is heroine for the soul. We seek it. We yearn for it. We will go out in to the world and do anything within our power to obtain it. I, like you, am a happiness junky.

Depressed people on bad days are junkies without a fix but they are so strung out that they can't even go out and mug someone to make the cost of recovery. It's a terrible analogy that I have used before. Depressed people often bitch slap me at the mention of this comparison but if you have truly felt that loss of control that comes with a down day then you will understand how it feels for your brain to control you and tell you what you will be doing. This exhibits as a 100% feeling of whatever your individually selected depressed emotion of choice is to be.

Imagine feeling sad. Of course, you can do that. Sad happens to everyone. Now turn up the sad ten fold and then another ten fold. Your sadness would be 3 on the Richter scale, while a seriously depressed person would be shaking Chile to rubble. This doesn't underestimate the severity of your feelings. Instead, I mean that if a normal people feels a tremor in their life then the magnitude of that in a depressed person's life will roll the Earth and move continents. Having felt both, I can vouch for the irrational and terrifying relativity of the latter.

The feelings may vary from time to time between sadness, loss, loneliness, emptiness, worthlessness and anything else a person can feel. The positive feelings can also be felt in the same way for people who are bi-polar but that is a post for another Sunday.

Whatever I feel when I am down, it is all I feel. Nothing else exists. There is no room for it. When you suffer extreme emotional trauma you can have a very similar reaction to severe physical trauma (a car crash for instance). The pain is enormous and overpowering. Your brain does the only thing it can to help you cope and to give it time to fix you. That often involves shutting down what isn't vital. Like a physical coma, you can experience what I can only describe as an emotional coma. You feel nothing. You are conscious though. You can interact, have all senses and move but your ability to feel emotions is dissociated. You are disconnected from who you are because you are so overwhelmed that you must be shut down to stop the awareness of suffering.

I have experienced this only a few times during my depression and those moments followed huge life stressors - like my ex-husband walking out on me, calling me to him and then telling me the world was a better place without me. This was at a time in my life when I was isolated and alone, without anyone to ground me. Alcohol never helped the situation either.

My blessing in this case is that my depression is referred to as behavioural and not chemical. This disorder was caused by a combination of abuse from my husband, environmental poisons like alcohol and social isolation (an effect of the abuse). These factors compounded to produce my slow degradation in to a severe depressive state. Unlike people who have chemical imbalances that cause their illness, mine is much easier to overcome. I am lucky... relatively.

The point of this whole post is to make people aware that the effect you have directly on the life of a depressed person is much more exaggerated than the same event enacted upon a healthy you. Empathy will never give you an inkling of what the explosive exaggeration of depression on what would be a normal reaction, may actually be.

The consequences are often drastic but not always visible until something awful like an attempt or successful suicide occurs.

Think twice before you ignore, attack, react negatively to or even bump in to a depressed soul. Tread carefully. They are more fragile than you may ever truly know, until it is too late.

Intervention

I need a favour from you. Yes, You.

Having spent many years as a giver in a relationship and not learning how to prioritise myself and my well-being when making decisions has left me in a disadvantaged position. When I enter a relationship with a guy, I end up giving so much that I forget to think of getting anything for myself in return.

That is what I need help with. I need to look at a situation and realise that I shouldn't be wasting time on someone who won't waste time on me. I can not be the only one who gives and changes and adjusts to how the other person runs things.

You, my friends, must remind me that it is far better to be alone and be myself than to live a life pleasing someone else and never being valued in return.

It's nothing wrong with the guys. It's me. I just have to pick different kind of men. A nice guy who likes me and treats me well. Surely, he exists. Now is the time to do other things and if he turns up then good. If not, I still have you all.

Don't let me fall in to another HE-IS-EVERYTHING-I-AM-NOTHING trap, please.