From Bleached Hair to Black Hair

I thought it'd be fun to bleach my hair blonde...  because as the saying goes, blondes have more fun. Well, it wasn't and no I did not have more fun. Not one second of it was fun. The process just to get it to this level of blondness was painful. I shortened it to a week long. I got my hair highlighted to start then I went for the hard core bleaching a few days later. I did 3 bleaching sessions after the high lighting session. I had so many sores on my scalp from the bleach burning me.  

My hair still felt soft and brush-able after the third bleaching session. The next day I washed my hair and towel dried it. My hair was so hard and dry, even while it was still wet. No amount of conditioner would soften it. I couldn't brush it when it was wet and it was even worse when it was dry. It looked bushy and dead, so I immediately died it black to hide the damage I had caused.

You can really see how damaged my hair was in this picture. My hair was absolutely dead. I was afraid to touch it. The hair salon told me I was one product away from a chemical meltdown and the best solution was to just cut all of my hair off. 

I wasn't ready to lose all of my hair. I waited so long to get it to this point. There was no way I'd just cut it off and start fresh. So I got serious about fixing my hair. 

My first step was to stop using any kind of heat on my hair. I put away all of my straighteners and curlers so I wouldn't have the slightest temptation. I said goodbye to my blowdryer.

Next, I got even more extreme. I said goodbye to my shampoo. Yep, I cut down to washing my hair once a week with conditioner only.  Conditioner is very important in this process. I used tons of coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, and homemade hair masks. Within a month I notice my hair was becoming silkier and easier to manage.

A lot better than having my hair all chopped off and this was just a month of taking extremely good care of my damaged hair.

I decided to try a little heat on my hair to see if it could withstand it and not burn off.

It looked nice and felt healthy but I decided not to risk it anymore until my hair was healthier.

A year and two hair trims later and my hair is back to normal. I thought I'd never see this hair again. I learned a huge lesson from this. I will never bleach my hair again. The process is not worth it. 

Birth Control Made My Life Hell

Lupin Blisovi Fe 1.5/30 is a 28 tablet birth control containing 21 pink tablets and 7 brown tablets. Each pink tablet contains norethindrone acetate USP 1.5 mg and ethinyl estradiol USP 0.03 mg; each brown tablet contains  ferrous furmarate USP 75 mg.

The nightmare didn't start right away. It started about two weeks into my first package. I took the pill every morning at 10 am with breakfast (yes I tried it after eating breakfast and on an empty stomach). Anyways, I was fine all day until after falling asleep and waking up at about two in the morning to the weirdest dizzy spell I'd ever had. After laying in bed with my eyes closed, the dizzy spell turned into a strange warming feeling in my chest, and from there it turned into a raging heat that would force me out of my clothes. Then came the excruciating stomach pains that had me hurling into the toilet for hours, until the sun came back up. I thought this was just my body adjusting to the birth control, but I was wrong. It happened every single night for 10 months. I thought I had adjusted, but really it just started to feel normal waking up every morning at two and puking until six in the morning. 

I have stopped the birth control and I will never ever take a birth control ever again. Any thoughts? Does anybody else have this problem?