My Sew-In Story, Part 3

Untangling My Matted Natural Hair

We're just coming off Part 1 and Part 2 of my sew-in story. I'm sure you're all wondering what in the world I did with all that matted hair, right?! Well, let me tell you!

It usually takes me no time at all to detangle my hair. I mentally prepared myself because I knew this time would be different. I figured my hair had been braided for months; I was just going to have to put some muscle in! I got set to detangle a small portion of my hair and I kid you not when I tell you it took me about 20 to 30 minutes to detangle one very small piece of hair! It was then I knew I messed up.

I ran downstairs to tell my boyfriend that something went wrong! I told him my hair was matted and it took me 30 minutes to detangle one piece of hair. I had tears running down my face at this point, so he knew it was serious. He told me it was okay and that he'd come up in a few minutes to help.

I went back and tried to calm down. I tried to move on to another section of hair and it seemed like every section I grabbed was not having it. My boyfriend came and we began to try and sort this thang out. Once he took over, I couldn't take it anymore and I broke down! When I tell you I cried my eyes out, I mean I cried every single last bit of my eyes out!! You would've thought it was the end of the world the way I was carrying on. My boyfriend told me he had never seen my cry that hard before, so it caught him off guard.

I saw how badly my hair was tangled and thought of all the time I'd put into growing my hair out. I thought about when I straightened my hair and how that set my hair back a year. I thought about how I'd gotten the sew-in to help my hair grow, not mess it up more. I thought about how I should've just gone to the salon and let a professional take the sew-in out instead of trying to do it myself messing around with YouTube! What it all boiled down to was me blaming myself for yet another setback with my hair.

After my break down, I texted the stylist that does my hair here in DC. I told her what was going on and asked if it was possible for her to squeeze me in because I needed an emergency appointment for the next day. Her instructions were to detangle as much of the hair as I could. I was willing to try and do whatever it took to get my hair right. I was just praying that it didn't mean having to cut it!

My boyfriend could read all the worry in my face and in my tears. He suggested we take a break, eat, get our energy up, and try to think of the best way to safely tackle my hair. So, we took a break. I was still devastated, so I was no good to anybody. My boyfriend used that engineer brain of his to come up with a strange idea that sounded like it might actually work. The idea was to detangle my hair underwater. How were we going to do this?? I'm glad you asked:

I hung my head over the arm of the futon into a storage bin filled with water. Strange idea, right?! Yes, it looks weird and yes, it was very painful hanging my head over the wooden arm of that futon for minutes at a time. The reasoning behind why this would work is that hair is strongest when wet. Why not detangle the matted mess on top of my head at its strongest point?! To keep from destroying my hair, my amazing boyfriend (patiently and so lovingly) used a rat tail comb, along with a little conditioner here and there, to detangle the shed hairs from my hair.

I started washing my hair around 5ish; we started detangling my hair around 10ish. The task of detangling my hair took a very long time because he was taking the most gentle approach possible. Since it wasn't his hair, my boyfriend had minimal attachment, no frustration, nor was he rushing to get through the process. He knew how much saving my hair meant to me, so he took his time and carefully detangled my hair to yield minimal hair loss. The hair ball from this detangling process was actually smaller than the first hair ball.

We "took another break" at 2 AM...that's right AM. It had been 4 hours and we hadn't even detangled half of my head yet.

The next morning before my appointment we went back at it. The method he came up with was working, it was just taking so much time to get through. As much as we both wanted to finish the detangling process at home. We didn't. The time for my appointment quickly approached.

I didn't know what to expect when I got to the salon, but I know I didn't want her to see my hair and say, "We need to cut it!"

Is that what she said??!! Stay tuned to find out!!

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