Another one
Introduce Yourself
Ok I'm 27 and I'm from Slovenia, Europe. So my interest in dreads or should I say locks started a couple years ago. I was wearing short hair for most of my lifetime, but I had periods when I let my hair grow longer. For many years I couldn't exactly figure out which hairstyle I want to have and I was experimenting a lot. I also followed fashion trends some years ago which I novadays find kinda silly. I could almost say that I was a bit ashamed even to sport longer hair when I was younger, because I always had curly hair and I though it looks funny (seems we were also taught in our culture that straight hair is the best hair).
For quite some time I had very short hairstyles and I was wearing hats and caps a lot. But then a couple years ago I had a dream in which I had beautiful long curly hair, which is my natural hair anyway. I woke up, touched my head found very little hair on it and I was kinda sad about it. From then on I decided that I want to have a long and natural hair like Jesus had. The Jesus comparison might seem out of place to some, but Jesus was always my role model not only in his actions but also as far as looks are considered. Of course I also had some other "long haired" inspirations in various people, but putting this aside, I think my main inspiration is coming from within, I probably just instinctively love my hair, it seems that it naturally gives me some self confidence.
So why dreads? Hmm this is a hard one, I don't even know if dreads are a correct term of what I'm looking for. I don't neccesarily aim at long "beefy" dreads like those of some stereotipycal "rastaman" from Jamaica. I just found out that my hair looks absolutely best when I don't mess with it and let it grow as it is. It sections on it's own, but I'd still love to have some "real dreads" happen to me in a couple of years. I'm all for a natural way like encouraged on this forum, anything else is completely out of the option for me. For quite some time I admired hairstyles of certain musicians, like Future for example. I thought his "thinner dreads" look absulutely great. But then as I did some research I figured out that such look is "artificial", it cannot happen naturally and I really don't wanna destroy my hair by forcing it into something that would only make it weaker, thinner and worse looking as a result. I rather don't have dreads than have "artificial dreads", I'm all for beautiful natural hair whther it be dreads or curls.
Even before I started reading dread related informations I was doing same stuff that I'm still doing now. I stopped combing my hair at least a year ago because I thought it looks way better this way, I hate a combed look I think it looks horrible (lol). I'm also not using a blow dryer for a couple years probably because it seemed that it makes my hair slighty weaker and feels less natural. However I do towel rub my hair after washing quite agressively in order to dry it at least to a degree, perhaps this is bad for dread formation and I should only air dry. I don't know, I'll get into those details later and in other topics.
Another thing: Last year after a one week vacation near the sea I was swimming every day, I let my hair air dry after and I didn't wash it with tap water for one week. As a result I almost got "real dreads" in a single week and I was afraid to wash it afterwards cause I loved it. But at the end of course I still washed it and those dreads dissappeared. I do have some dreading going on nearly all the time, but "real dreads" have not happened to me yet in cca. 2 years, perhaps I'm doing something wrong. As I said, I'll try to go into more details later on in other topics, hope this post wasn't too long and poorly written. As I write long paragraphs my writing style tends to get worse with length and time spent.
updated by @alienemotion: 07/20/16 03:28:12PM