If you touch my baby's hair, I'll have to kill you.

I'm not saying that I want kids right now. I do not. I'm already perplexed about life enough. I also am not saying that I will be having kids with my boyfriend right now because that's a big thing to plan and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

BUT, I am saying that when I have kids I'm pretty sure it's not going to be with a man who has a straight or wavy hair. I've never dated any type of European or Caucasian guys, or even lighter skinned Hispanic. I usually date guys who have a darker complexion than me whether they be Hispanic or African American. Because of this most of them had fairly (but undoubtedly) curly to extremely curly hair and I'm pretty sure my future has someone with the same kind of hair in store. In any case, even if I did move on to have kids with someone with straight hair my strong genes might cause them to be born with very thick, curly hair considering how curly my hair is.

The point is, I promise my unborn children, specifically daughters if I have them, that I will never let anyone relax or put any chemicals of the sort near their hair. If I hadn't lived with my father and grandfather as a child my mother would have never relaxed my hair from the time I was five years old until my freshmen year in high school. There was no need, my natural hair was capable of growing long and beautifully. Today, I might even be more comfortable with my hair as it is and naturally had they never made me go through the process of constant relaxing and cutting my hair to shoulder length.

At one point, when I stopped relaxing I didn't appreciate my hair enough to take care of it. I had this full head of thick hair that spread out wide and far, and everyone would make fun of me for it (even when it was relaxed, but curly!). I came to be ashamed of what I had on my head so when I was old enough I tried everything I could to change it. I went through having half of my head copper and the other brown to being a full copper color to becoming a red head to bleaching my hair... twice to cutting it all off and dying it light brown to flat iron it to death until I needed to cut it off again and dye it black to blond highlights to the front part of my hair being blond to half of my head being blond and really damaged to what I have now. At the beginning of these years of hair transformation I was happy that I was losing hair because I hate having so much and people making fun of me. Now, I'd give anything to have my natural full, thick hair back, but I'll never have it back. My hair is still thicker than most, but it is nothing like what I started out with and nothing like what I had after I stopped relaxing. To anyone else, my hair is perfectly fine now. One might even say that my hair is pretty. Internally, dealing with the fact that this is my hair now bothers me a lot.

The smallest things can change how a person feels inside about life and about them. I want my kids to be proud of their hair no matter what texture it is. I want them to be able to grow up with strong, thick hair like I used to have if that is the case. I want them to understand that the way they were (will be) born is beautiful and let no one convince them of any different. I don't mind if they experiment with different things, but I want them to do it by choice. I want them to do it because it's what they truly want and not because the people around them told them it would be better. I want to teach my unborn children to know that they are best just the way they are.