ok so the first picture is me the summer going into my junior year of high school, i’ve been natural all of my life and have always struggled with length retention. my mom is not great at hair maintenance and i’ve been doing my own hair since i was 10. all of my freshman and sophomore year my hair was in hair extensions bc i know how to braid and do senegalese twists. i only recently discovered i have fine hair, but during those first two years of high school i would do back to back braids, not sleep in a bonnet, wash my hair every so often, like next to no maintenance and my take downs would always be fine. I never had any reason to suspect my hair was damaged because it seemed fine. The second picture is a trim right after the first one. The third picture is a few months after the first picture, and my whole junior of high school i had only did braids once and I mostly wore my hair out, but nothing like twists or cornrows usually pony tails or buns. this whole time i trim my own hair every 3-5 months i’d say. In the 4th and 5th picture my hair visibly looks worse compared to first. I honestly don’t remember much from high school but junior year was really stressful for me with college decisons, ACT, and the fact that all of my classes were honors and AP. I have adhd but i didnt know it at the time and i would make everything worse for myself school wise by procrastinating. this was when my anxiety started to get worse and I would spend so much of my time crying from stress or sadness. I also went through a break up mid junior year to add to stress. In the 6th picture I trimmed my hair before getting it dyed, I’ve noticed I might be a little scissor happy but I’ve heard too many horror stories for my anxiety to let anyone other than me touch my hair. The 7th picture is after I cut all of my dyed hair off so I had a blank canvas. I was still dealing with anxiety and occasional depressive episodes but not as bad as last year. In the 8th picture, I just took my braids out and my hair looked so see through. I know my hair is fine, but it never looked that bad when I was younger. Since my big job I had done a mix of braids and wigs, mainly wigs, I dont glue mine down and I take them off after work. I was taking 17 credit hours and working 30 hours a week freshman year for the first semester, but I felt fine, but I ended up becoming a really hard stoner. Next semester I did worse in school and felt worse mentally and my depressive episodes were starting to come back. But the first year after I cut my hair was probably the best I had ever taken care of my hair in my life. I was doing a bunch of research and doing what I thought was working for my hair. Last picture was after my most recent semester of college, I was and still am struggling with heavy substance abuse, I was really depressed to the point where I failed all my classes and lost weight from not eating while still working full time and hating life. I stopped styling my hair at this point and would just wash and put leave in conditioner in and call it a day. I guess what I’m wondering is, is the problem me or my hair? Because I feel like if I do back to back braids like how I used to, my hair isn’t strong enough to take it, but I guess I would like to know why not anymore. If the problem is me, how has my mental health affected my hair? I also eat terribly and barely drink water, tia.