TIFU by not using hair conditioner

This is a relatively minor issue. Tl:dr I didn’t use hair conditioner for a couple of weeks and killed my hair.

I have had long hair since I was eleven years old, and I have, for most of my life until recently, used conditioner after shampooing. Some relevant backstory (apologies, it is stupidly long): In high school, I had started using my mom’s shampoo and conditioner set on my hair, because it was nicer and my hair was better with it. Until mom found out that I was the one using it up, and got mad because apparently that was her expensive fancy stuff. So I went back to the cheap generic stuff.

When I left for college, I bought a jumbo sized set of generic shampoo and conditioner to use. Then, that Christmas, mom gifted me a set of those fancy shampoo and conditioner. I didn’t want to use it all up, and even one use had a decent effect on my hair anyways, so I used the fancy set sparingly while mainly using the jumbo set. I soon realized, after my first year of college was over and I barely made a dent in those jumbo bottles, that that set it going to last me a while.

Now where the relevant part comes in: I decided to make a promise to myself, that when I had completely used up those jumbo bottles, I will be able to afford to use the fancy ones exclusively.

After I graduated and got an engineering job, I was making good money and both sets of bottles were getting down. As anyone familiar with shampoo and conditioner knows, I used up all the jumbo shampoo before the conditioner was out. I considered switching to the fancy kind then, but I wanted to use up all my old stuff before I use the nice stuff. Around this time, I had also impulsively bought a bar of shampoo at the farmers market. So I decided to use it until my conditioner was out.

Then, when I was so close to fulfilling my promise to myself, tragedy struck, and I found myself out of the job. Obviously, when job hunting, you don’t buy ridiculously expensive shampoo and conditioner. But I also did not want to buy a cheap generic set as well. So, I continued to use it until I ran out of the conditioner.

Now here is where my FU comes in. I recently got a new job, however things have been hectic lately and I have not had the time to go out and buy fancy stuff, and I am a bit cautious anyways since I am so new at my job. So, I continued my habit of using the fancy bottles sparingly, while regular using the generic. Except I was out of generic, and only used the shampoo bar. Over the last few weeks, my hair has been noticeably frizzier, however I attributed that to it being winter, stress and new medication. But then, then past week, I have noticed that when I come into work and take my hat and coat off, my hair is badly tangled, I mean borderline matted, even though I had brushed it before leaving for work. I started detangling it when I get to work, using my fingers, but I noticed that my hair was unusually dry and broke easily.

That was when I realized my FU. I had not used conditioner in quite some time, and now the condition of my hair is shit. I had never not used conditioner before, and did not know what would happen if I stopped using it. Well, now I do, and I don’t know how long it will be until it bounces back.

Lesson learned: use hair conditioner regularly.