Plant New Seeds | H.S.| AU

Chapter Fifteen - Wash Day

N I A

Sundays were reserved for Wash Day.

No Wash Day was ever exactly the same. I could never just fucking settle on one exact routine, always trying different products and different methods out of boredom.

Countless custards, endless elongators, and overbearing oils all coated my fingers for hours on end every single Sunday.

Every week, I would start the stopwatch on my phone and keep track of the time each different routine took.

One week was four hours and forty-five minutes, another was five hours and twenty minutes, and another was two hours and fifty-four minutes.

Functioning on inconsistency seemed to be the only way I knew how; partly daring, somewhat damaging, and a whole habit hard to break.

The daring part intrigued me more.

I dared to fluctuate my music choices that scored my chore. Prince one weekend as I mimicked the iconic Darling Nikki scene from Purple Rain, my drenched hair creating a mess as it wildy swung under the shower head.

And Amy Winehouse another as I sang to myself in the mirror about not wanting to go to rehab, ironically.

This weekend, I chose to let the music choose itself as I drowned in a conglomerate of fucked up emotion.

Nothing was more daring than trying a new product, coating the dampened curls in some overpriced pudding that a self-proclaimed guru on YouTube convinced me my 'curls would love.'

How the hell would she know?

This weekend, I settled for a cheap jar of curl activator that I bought from the rinky-dink beauty supply in the back of my cabinet. I didn't have enough money to splurge on new products this time around.

And the most daring part was waiting the latest time possible to braid my hair and expecting the braid out to actually be successful, defined and voluminous curls galore.

More like frizzy, shrunken and struggling to the max.

This was why I always opted for just letting my hair do whatever it wanted, just as long as I kept her fed and moisturized.

She was a wild beast and preferred to thrive untamed.

This weekend, I decided to actually braid it. Perfect distraction.

Standing up on my feet for an hour as my hands ached from moving them back and forth around sectioned off parts of my thick hair—perfect self-torment.

It was a shame that I couldn't even get out of bed to actually carry any of that out.

I could never figure out what the fuck it was about morning rain that made getting out of bed feel like the end of the world.

The darkened sky skipped the morning sun and advanced straight to the afternoon bleak, stealing the best part of a new day before it could even happen.

Each raindrop plunged against the window uniquely, some impacting it harsher than others; watching two droplets race each other down the glass was the only concept that piqued my clouded brain's interest.

I always chose one to root for, simply based on an instinct.

The drop I chose always lost.

Troubled streaks scattered and splattered frantically, trembling just as hard as I was, as though to show their solidarity in my torment.

I missed the sun. It disabled every single one of the opportunities to evade the harsh truths and to take comfort in a false sense of awareness.

And yet, it shone a light on what lies underneath the surface. It forced my eyes open to awaken me and lead me out of a limbo state.