really weak waves? #watdatmean

soooo for all my life thought i had straight hair. i don’t know when i started this, but for ages i would brush my hair out after getting out of the shower because the frizz would just be awful if i didn’t.

it wasn’t until like a year ago i was like, “wait, when i DON’T brush my hair out and leave it alone after i shower, it’s almost got the slightest wave.” didn’t think much of it i guess.

then all this curly hair stuff started hitting my feed. i’d watch the videos because they were genuinely entertaining and also informative even for straight hair.

then my mind kinda drifted. and i wondered.

sooo i tried “creation gel” or whatever it’s called, after leave-in conditioner, then tried scrunching with a towel. while my hair’s wet it definitely LOOKS like it’s ALMOST curly. sort of. i was told if it was straight it wouldn’t scrunch that way at all, but i’m also told that it can be like that while wet but will dry straight if it’s straight (and i’m believing more of the latter, wet hair is impressionable). didn’t really work… except for the ends, the ends curled and stayed curled even when i brushed it out. with enough of the gel airdrying outside in the heat, my hair almost seemed curly until i brushed it, then poof gone, straight except for the ends. i thought that was it, no waves, just straight.

but then like- why would the ends be wavy? is my hair weighing it down? so many questions. (i have really long hair for context.)

then today, after i went swimming, i tried to tan (failed LOL), but bc of that my untampered hair dried SUPER fast and it dried SO wavy with no product or nothing!

sooo i invest in a diffuser. the final test. and i switch to a mousse, as advised by my sister’s girlfriend who has some tight freaking curls, and she said NOT to do leave-in conditioner WITH the mousse but i’m not sure if that’s true. anyway. i do the mousse, i diffuse my hair. it actually worked too? i think drying it before my hair could weigh down the waves is actually what did it, with mousse holding the weak ass curl structure.

do i need to strengthen the curl pattern or something? after years of treating it like it’s completely straight when it (probably) isn’t, do i just keep doing a curly hair routine until…?

i have so many questions and none of my immediate family have curly hair. my sister’s gf is black and that’s it, they all white with straight hair. feel like i was just tossed into an entirely new world. unless my hair is just straight and somehow managed to curl with mousse and diffusing IDFK. feel free to scream at me i guess.

tldr: is there a way to make the curls more permanent? that is, if they’re real waves and not just my hair being influenced or something? are they real if they’re weak, or is weak just the beginning? there’s SO many mixed answers online and i’m totally new to all of this so.