I grew up in a white world, with my Irish and English grandmother, on a diet of rhubarb crumble and Catholic Sunday schools in the beautiful view of the North Sea. In a world where my sister only had one person darker than her in school - me. People asked if I was adopted when with my mum, my Granny threatened a bully with my ‘big black Dad’ as if he was the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. It didn’t truly occur to me that being mixed race was entirely different, that other people didn’t have a Mum that made them dahl and basine on Saturdays, who spoke in Arabic with her brother so my cousins and I couldn’t understand. The childhood experience of being surrounded by white culture while not being white was difficult but made it so easy to ignore the difficulties at the same time, it was so easy to ignore that people asked where I was from, not if I was born in Alnwick or Ashington hospital. The surprise when I did the best in English classes.

 

But because of this, there was a separation of my culture, a stark difference to what I experienced and what my parents did, let alone my older half siblings. I never learnt Arabic (not past the generic greetings) and didn’t grow up eating salt fish and ackee. I never truly learnt what it means to be Caribbean or what it means to be Arab, because I didn’t speak the cultural language.

 

In both cultures, hair is so important. It is your crown. As a child, mine was constantly shoved away in two large plaits to tame the curls, as a teen, it was tucked into a tight bun, the frizziness framing my head.

 

I remember coming back from summer holidays, jealous of the girls who had hair wraps and beads on only a small section of hair, the wonderful ease of putting it up in a ponytail the morning after a sleepover. The smooth and shiny hair that didn’t have any of  my frizzy mess, the fact that their hair could go down past their shoulders, while mine, so stubborn and short that it never seemed to grow. That swimming lessons didn’t mean hours sat at my granny's knee combing out the knots.

When I moved to my dad's at eleven, I had to start taking care of my hair myself. My granny wasn't there to plait my hair every morning, so instead I shoved it into a makeshift bun and ignored it. I used a brush to smooth over the small tufts of hair too small to fit in the bun. I broke countless brushes and combs, even more hair bobbles and by twelve I had a patch of matted hair at the back where a knot grew and grew until it couldn’t come out.

 

The first time, I cut it out. My hair was always in a bun anyway so it wasn't noticeable.

 

The second time, I cut it out.  I hadn't had a haircut in a while.

 

The third time, I sat down and used a whole bottle of Tresemmé and painstakingly separated every strand and combed out the matted knots and twisted curls. I was thirteen, and I accepted defeat after an hour. I cut it out, but this time, it was a much smaller section.

 

When I was fourteen, I borrowed my aunt's hair straighteners and my hair was straight for the first time. It took three hours, and lasted about the same as the humid air ruined the work I had done. By fifteen, the only time I wore my hair out of my classic twist at the front to catch all the baby hairs and bun at the back was when I had spent hours on Sunday evening using a too high temperature setting, filling mine and my sisters room with the smell of burnt hair. She'd moan from her top bunk about the light still being on at 11pm, but it would all be worth it the next day when I would get compliments on how long my hair was and how jealous everyone was of how thick it was.

 

It usually rained the day after.

 

At sixteen, I had my year eleven prom, and being an all girls school it was full of drama, a dedicated Facebook page to make sure no one wore the same dress (even though five girls definitely did) and I wanted to wear my hair out. I straightened it the day before, and touched it up when getting ready at my friends house. By the time we went outside to take photos in her back garden, the frizz was growing against the nape of my neck, the volume felt unseemly and the gel I had put in to hold the hair was causing waves at the front. By the time we got to the venue, I had to put my hair in a tight pony tail to hold it back.

 

The next year, I was seventeen and I bleached the curls out of my hair, smothering it in coconut oil to ensure it didn’t break. I dyed it pink for three weeks over the summer, and watched it fade and wash away with every shower.

 

Then I was eighteen and  I was tired of the damaged ends, the inconsistency in texture, the old heat damage. I cut and I cut and I cut until it barely went past my ear and the curls caught in my earrings. I wore my hair naturally to my sixth form prom and didn’t tie it up once.

 

At nineteen I read everything I could about how to look after my hair. I learnt my curl type, the difference between isopropyl and cetyl alcohol in a way that meant something other than the context of the chemistry degree I was studying. I stopped using sulfates, I cowashed and threw out my straighteners. I would go on nights out and wash the smell of cigarette smoke and cherry VK out of my hair.

 

When I was twenty, I knew people who had never seen my hair hidden.

 

I'm twenty one and I had a matted knot last week. I spent three hours combing it carefully with shea butter and separated every strand until each curl was there, defined and free.