Any ideas (or help) for my hair?

First picture is my hair now, after a normal blow dry. Second was last october (I think) and that's about what I usually get with tons of product. Last picture was me as a child.

So, I really hate my hair. It's stupidly thick and a lot (although right now it's falling out like crazy because of allergies), to the point where the hairdresser wanted us to pay more just because it was so much more than most people have. My friend cuts it now so that's not a worry for me anymore. However, I really want my curls back. Look at my baby picture, such cute little curls! They went away as I got older because nobody took proper care of my hair and so they eventually turned to waves, and since I grew it out to my hips and still didn't care for it I had a bird's nest on my head to the point we had to cut it all and I walked around with a Karen cut for a while. With 15 I got sick of all that hair and cut it short short. Since then I barely have any structure. It used to still be a bit wavy but now I don't even get that anymore. Even if I don't dye or bleach. So to not walk around with flat, structureless hair, I spend about 45 minutes carefully styling it. I use curl shampoo, multiple conditioners and then gel and blow dry with a diffuser. That's becoming too much work for me though, and after two hours it's already back to almost nothing. I've been told my hair does have structure but is too heavy to hold anything.

Besides getting a perm, is there anything I can do to get those curls back? If not, how could I style that cut with as little effort as possible so it doesn't look that flat? I like this haircut and I don't really want to go back to default little boy cut just to have some volume until it's too long again :(