Split Ends Be Damned!
All my plans today got turned upside-down. I had every intention of studying but instead spent the greater part of the day going through my head, trimming split ends. Yes I said trimming split ends!!! Why? This morning while combing my hair I noticed an usual amount of snagging. Upon investigation I realised it was due to split ends. Split ends aren’t too bad then they actually occur at the ends of your hair but these buggers were manifesting themselves in the middle of the hair strand! I couldn’t leave them alone I had to try to get rid of them.
I didn’t have the heart to trim several inches so I decided to do the search and destroy method to rid my hair of them. They were of 5 distinct types (highlighted in red in the photo): crinkle, knot, offshoot, right angle and taper. The search and destroy method is great for retaining length but damn does it consume a lot of time!! After some 3 hours of searching and trimming section by section I thought I had completed a thorough pass through my head. On the second pass however, I found almost as many split ends as the first pass. It’s early evening and I’m tired. I’ve resolved that I’ll need to to this over several days before I could profess my head to be split-end free.
Various types of split ends. Mine are circled in red.
Besides just being time-consuming, search and destroy is tiring. I was staked out in front of the bathroom mirror; scissors in hand and ‘combing’ through my hair inch by inch. After some time, I recruited the fiance to help. Gave him a crash course on what split ends looked like, reiterated that he should only cut the split end and not any other part of my hair. He nodded in agreement but unfortunately he had to complete work and couldn’t help 
Or at least that was his excuse.
As I was destroying the split ends; their presence made some things crystal clear and other things puzzling. Most of them were situated halfway up my hair shaft and explained the reason that the hair in the middle of my head had broken where it did. They are also probably the culprit for the excessive breakage I’ve been experiencing for the past couple of weeks. What is still a mystery is what happened to the middle of my hair that caused them. There could be soo many things and I was too exhausted to speculate.
My hair at the moment is an uneven mess, partially due to all the breakage and partially due to my activities today, but I can’t bring myself to go and have it evened out…not yet at least. To even it out AND get rid of all the split ends I’m looking at losing 3 inches or more. For the time being I’ll happily traipse around with uneven hair.
Wow! finally someone has the same problem as me. My family thinks I’m crazy because I go through my hair to cut offshoots LOL.
Have you found the reason behind all of that?
I didn’t have the patience to isolate products and techniques to figure out which one was the culprit to be honest. I just changed everything cold turkey. Lol. I’m using all new products these days and I’ve noticed a big difference in the amount of split ends.
Hi,
This may be ovbious but could the reason for you hair being broken at the middle be cause of hair elastics if you weare your hair tied up?
Heyyy ! I do the same, I have long strawberry blonde hair and I got the ends dip dyed bleached and now my hair is so fluffy at the ends, every strand of hair feels bumpy from the root when you run your fingers along the hair. I’ve resulted in pulling hairs from the root that are extremely dead. I’ve always had healthy hair and this is really fascinating me! I love my hair
Please advice!
If all your split ends are at the ends of your hair then the best thing to do is just get them trimmed off. If they’re higher in the hair strand then you can use the Search and Destroy method if you want to avoid losing too much hair.
I have the same horrible obsession and am determined to stop because of how much it damages your hair. But it’s so addicting!
It sure is. I haven’t done it for some time now.
I have offshoot hair too. What are they, and WHY do they form?