look to your locs

When I doubt my ability to commit to something, I look at my hair.

Six years in, the locs feel like mine in a way that’s hard to articulate, they move with me, they’re part of how I take up space. But I remember the early days. Fragile, coming undone, refusing to stay where I put them, not always the nicest things to look at. I remember feeling up my sisters fro because I missed the texture. The longing for box braids, for a weave, for the simple ability to tie my hair back into a ponytail. The frustration of retightenings when the bonds felt more like a burden than a becoming.

That was also me. That frustration, that longing for the easier thing, that commitment to something I couldn’t yet see the end of, that was also me.

The struggle didn’t disappear. It just became manageable, expected, woven into the rhythm of the month. A monthly retightening is now just part of life. The goal was never to make the effort effortless. It was to reach a point where the effort feels ordinary.

So when a new habit feels impossible, or a commitment feels like it’s asking too much, or I’m tempted to go back to the easier thing, I look to my locs. They are small, but they are mighty evidence. Evidence that I have done this before. That I can take on a new system of behaviour and not let the setback cause me to quit. That the thing I cannot yet see the end of can still become mine.

The hard times that led here are not something to forget. They are proof.