My mind is swimming on a slow, swirling river of memories. My eyes are aching from straining; straining to see the trees and grass that I remember as home. That little green house at the bottom of the hill. The cracked concrete steps. The painstakingly painting numbers … 7 … 3 … 1 … Where did the driveway go? The sidewalk? I can’t see them anymore. The river is pulling me under. I gasp, but air reaches my lungs easily … this is all in my head. I can feel my body, heavy and useless. My muscles do not recognize me any longer, though my instincts remember fear. My skin crawls and my mouth tastes like blood.
Please. Please. Please. Pleeeaaasssseeeee.
My begging dissolves into a soft sigh. My lungs are contracting and relaxing … my mind is slowly drying on the shore. My limbs are once again mine, as if I were only waking from a long sleep. Only my goose bumps and the taste of iron remain.
My eyes open but I don’t remember making that decision. Everything is bright and clear. But what is everything? I sit up slowly, still numb. The room around me seems to be … an illusion? All I can see is white. Not a piercing, blinding light, but a soft illumination. I cannot find the walls or the ceiling or the corners. But everything is white.
I brace my hands on either side of my hips, curl my legs so I can stand, and pause. I stare hard at the familiar jeans … light blue denim with white threads peeking through.
Are my legs … thinner?
I raise a hand to my thigh only to jerk back in surprise. My hands are different, too. The tapered fingers are long and graceful, the fingernails perfectly shaped. On the side of my right middle finger is a tiny line tattoo of an elephant, trunk raised for good luck. I stare at the little trinket …
I’ve never gotten a tattoo before.
I stand quickly, unnerved. My hair swings forward with the sudden movement, and I can’t help but shriek. My hair is thick and black, cascading to my waist in gradual waves and curls. I look down at myself. My body is lean and muscled, and it is easy to tell, even in this measureless void, that I am much taller than I was before. I can see a couple other tattoos, one on my shoulder and one on my forearm, both tasteful and both having appeared without my knowing.
My breathing starts to quicken, I can feel my veins become heavier as fear pulsed through them.
A mirror. I need a mirror.
Turning in circles, my panic starting to peak suddenly I can see myself. I jerk to a stop, staring at a reflection that was just as foreign to me as the frameless, floor-length mirror that had appeared before me.
The person that stares back at me comes from a world I’ve never known. Their skin is a smooth, creamy brown over high cheekbones and around full, sensuous lips. Their eyes are slanted and wide with confusion and terror and … hope? The blue of their irises are broken up with lines and dots as bright as sunflower petals. Their eyes are framed by dusky black lashes.
Even standing with the weight of terror pressing down, their stance is strong and immovable. Their hands are slightly curled, ready to fight. As I watch, something glints behind those eyes that remind me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. There is strength beyond compare there.
This stranger stares back at me as I stand in a room made of light.
They are waiting.
We are waiting.
I am waiting.
I am looking at myself.
Slowly, I raise my graceful hand to my slender, sculpted, cheek. It skims my lips, my eyes, trails over my hair.
This is me.
…why?
The whisper echoing through my mind is so deceiving, I’m not sure it is originally mine. But whoever thought it, I can’t help but agree. Why would this ever happen … to me?
I watch as my reflection catches the flow of my understanding is it widens my eyes and opens my lips into a perfect ‘oh!’
All of this,
every bit and piece,
is a choice.
Never once in my life have I wanted to look the way I did, act the way I acted. I wanted to be thin and strong and powerful, but beautiful and free as well. I wanted to be a warrior. Like the Amazon women from the Greek Myths. Like the goddess Diana, the Huntress.
As I looked deeper and further into the mirror, I could see my home and my family. Except, just as my body had changed, so had everything else. This house was blue, the steps were neat and tidy and the numbers unfamiliar. The faces and names of those I love had changed, though the feelings were still strong.
The feelings are all that matter.
But is that true?
Of course love is love, no matter what shape or form it comes in. But the faces and voices – these are how I know I am home! The familiarity, the individuality, the strange and the ordinary. I look back into these beautiful eyes, back at the lips and hands, the legs and torso.
In this body I am strong. I am beautiful. I am a warrior.
But this body doesn’t hold that scar from falling in the pool when I was seven.
The crooked smile from my chipped tooth.
This body will never remember the feel of bark beneath my fingers as I climbed the backyard tree.
This body will never remember the smell of my mother’s perfume.
Or the taste of my first kiss.
This body is not me. True, this is my mind. But although the body is everything I want to be, it will never be who I am.
Two words ring out in the silence of this void I have come to know.
“I decline.”
My vision blurs as the watercolors of this world run and collide, mixing and morphing until everything is righted again.
And there I stand.
Flat brown hair and freckled cheeks. Muddy green eyes and small, wide hands. My body is short and wide, but strong and true. My little mouth grins and my chipped front tooth winks at me.
In this body I am strong. I am beautiful. I am a warrior.