Dreams About Hair. She Does.

So I’ve had the strangest desire these past few days to want to wear my hair in two braids. Not plaits but tight severe braids, the kind that at first pull your face so tight there is a visible difference in your features, two braids with a middle part starting at the very top of my head and heading down to become neat little plaits hanging down my back. The kind of braids that you can sleep in for two nights in a row and on the third day they just look a little looser and give less of a facelift but definitely don’t look slept in.

Back in primary school, every time we did some sort of play or dance number we always had to braid our hair. My sister usually did mine because to this day I still can not braid. I was always so proud of the braid she did, she was brutal, pulled so tight I had to wince and try my hardest not to make a noise. I used to get to school on dress rehearsal and performance day and look around and see all those other girls, most with substandard braids and be so happy with my tight, fierce braid working it’s way perfectly from the top of my head and carrying on down my back. I always had a really good braid. Mum sometimes did it, her braid was never as tight, but it was ok, my sister’s braids were the best.

I’m not sure why I’ve been craving this dual braid business. One could probably analyse it and come to the conclusion that I’m trying my hardest to hold on to my youth and fight this adultness that seems to be inevitable. But one can also reasonably assume that sentences that begin with one as a pronoun are usually filled with utter wank.

I’ve also been having dreams lately about my hair. When I dream I either don’t remember any of it and just have a vague feeling that I dreamt something or I dream really vividly and remember every detail of the strange acid trip that was my night journeys. The ones I remember always jump quickly from realistic to completely surreal - that’s the nature of dreams I guess.

The thing that stands out about my dreams though, whether I remember the details or not is that they are always so emotionally charged, most of it seemingly unwarranted. I sometimes wake myself up hysterically crying over something that in normal life would evoke nothing more than a shrug or a passing thought. Or I’ll wake up in such a foul mood that it sticks with me the whole day, affecting not only myself but the people who have to interact with me.

One of the dreams I will never forget was when I was five, I had the shingles and according to the parentals was really quite sick. I remember this dream so clearly because it - strangely - is one of the scariest dreams I have ever had. The dream in it’s whole was quite surreal, I’m in a race against the road runner (yes that one ‘beep beep’) it’s not an organised race but some sort of race to get something, the terrain we are racing across is an orange circle, with the second half of the circle a darker orange. I’m going as fast as I can and I know I have to get to the other end of the circle before the road runner. As I cross the mid point and the colour changes to a darker orange I feel this intense sense of urgency, like if I don’t get there before the road runner something horrible will happen. It was as if the outcome of this race across the orange circle would affect the rest of my waking life, like if I didn’t beat that road runner I might even die. I didn’t beat the road runner. I was woken up before we got to the end, I wasn’t winning. This was definitely one of those waking up crying hysterically dreams

I do have happy dreams, dreams that result in absolute feelings of bliss, dreams where you wake up choking because you started giggling in your sleep and spend the next half an hour half choking half giggling at the hilarity of something I don’t remember. Other dreams too, you know the ones, the really good ones

Wow. Tangent.

So I dreamt about my hair. It’s not like my obsession with my hair is particularly shallow, it’s just always been a very quick way to suddenly tweak my identity slightly but significantly enough that those feelings of staleness and boredom can be quelled. Another way of avoiding the point I guess. I’m pretty sure I would have beaten that roadrunner.

Anyone know how to do a good, tight braid?