Hello, I'm 22 years old and I think I want to have dreadlocks since I was 15, but I had some bad experiences with it.
I first tried backcombing and crocheting, but I couldn't do it alone, then my mother and grandmother offered me help, but (although they had really good intentions and I'm very thankful for all the ours the two spent trying to give me dreadlocks haha) it didn't turn out looking like dreadlocks, it was looking more like braids.
After this, I met some "hippies" (which don't fit at all in what I believe a hippie is, but they called themselves that) with dreadlocks that said they would do it for me for 50$. Turns out the way they were doing it was a kind of really harmful bare-hand backcombing and pulling, I was in a lot of pain and losing a huge amount of hair, so after one hour or so I couldn't stand it anymore (and I think it wasn't even half done), told them to stop and went to get my hair shaved. My scalp was really red and aching for about 3 days after this. (Nowadays, my hair is kinda scarce in some parts of my head, I still think this episode had an important role in achieving this :P).
So, I decided to let my hair grow and maybe get dreadlocks one day when it would be bigger.
Yesterday I started searching the internet about any salon in the city I'm currently living in where I could get "professionaly-done-instadreads" and I found this website.
It neveroccurredto me that my hair could start dreadlocking naturally and when I first read it here I must admit that I thought this would be no good, but then I saw a lot of photos and I think the result is simply amazing, waaay more beautiful than any "instadread" I've ever seen. Also way more meaningful!
I never comb my hair because I'm too lazy, it's been more than 4 months since I last combed it, but I have the bad habit of "combing" it with my hands, looks like I've just fighting my natural dreads, just gotta loose this habit and I'm all set... and I'm starting it today 
Actually there's even a part in the back which I always neglect when "hand combing" where I'm pretty sure a baby dread is forming (another one was too I think, but I struggled hand combing it for 2 weeks, and now it's gone, lol).
I just want to ask a few questions:
My hair is reaally curly and it usually doesn't look good when dry because it's too volumous. Do you think this problem would keep existing after it starts locking?
Mainly because of the reason above, I always use kind of a pony tail, but compressing my hair as a "little ball". Would this be bad for letting it dreadlock? Is it better if I start using it "normally" or with a regular ponytail?
Should I avoid hair conditioner? Is washing with regular shampoo fine? (until I can go buy a non residue one)
PS: Sorry for the long post!
updated by @alvaro: 01/13/15 09:24:06PM
