Sorry Protective Styling...

It's just not for me
I feel like I've been having a private battle with protective styling, saying I'm going to do it but not really doing it. I keep trying to fit into the natural community's ideas of protective styling, wearing braids and twists, sometimes weaves over extended days, weeks, months... I just can't do it! Every single time I've tried to protective style since I've been natural has been an epic fail time wise, taking out my braids and weaves all at the two week point or before.
I love wearing my hair out. I love being able to wash it, run my fingers through it, feel it blow in the wind... I feel like those Bosley hair commercials "You can play tennis with it, swim with it.." lol.
But seriously, It's just funny to think that I've been on this natural journey for almost 2 years now, this being my first year that I've made it through without melting down and chopping all my hair off again. Now that I understand my hair and myself more, I do have to readjust my goals a little...
At this point I see where my true problem areas are and what routine/regimen I need to use in order to retain length: Roller sets & Twist Outs. I also see that with the issues I do have, my long term goal of growing my layers out has now become a short term goal. I basically have a Mohawk of medium textured looser waves & curls, and fine textured, thin, sometimes dry, porous curly edges. My Mohawk is beautiful, thrives, doesn't break, hardly splits... My edges on the other hand :::wipes away forming tears::: So fine they get tangled easily, split like every second, SSK's sometimes two per strand or 1/4 way up the strand... it can be a damned horrid nightmare sometimes, especially if I've been a naughty girl, forgetting to sleep with my bonnet on. My Mohawk continues to flourish and barely needs trimming, while my edges continue to break or need constant trimming... So since I'm trying to maintain healthy hair, the hair in my Mohawk sections are growing down and will soon be meeting up with the length of my edges, meaning I won't have these layers anymore, I'm so excited!!! Then come winter I can focus on growing out my length more without all the annoying layers.
I loved my relaxed short hair cuts. I never wanted short natural hair (except for wanting a Cesar). I don't really feel comfortable wearing all of the TWA styles, little braids and twists... it's just not me. I grew hair out to have a beautiful ponytail and long Pocahontas braids... so in the meantime, even if it takes me a little longer to get to my length goals, I'm okay with that...
I'm hoping to be full arm pit length by New years 2013, without all the layers because I want to grow my hair out to a blunt cut with about an inch of layering at the bottom. Since I cut all my hair down to a little less than 2 inches in October of 2010, my longest lengths in my Mohawk are now about 7 inches and my shorter lengths (the edges) are about 5-6 inches long.... I'd say that's not terrible length retaining considering I wear my hair out practically everyday and I do trim/dust my ends about every 2 months and I did cut considerably more off the back to avoid having an Afro mullet.

End of October 2010 - Second Big Chop

That being said... I do need to do a little protective styling for this month because I'm going to Cali next month and I want to try to go with as much hair as possible! Lol So my goal is to just try and keep the back, the edges, and my ends up and protected by any means necessary, the top can stay out in twist outs..
So the end of October  2010 to March 2012 - so basically about 16 going on 17 months... not bad huh? Sometimes this hair journey can get discouraging so these comparison pics are sooo helpful.

Today:

Whenever I get discouraged, I just try to keep growing!