Everything felt strange suddenly. You feel like someone smacked you in the face with an open palm. The headache that you felt coming on was so intense and you wonder if maybe you’re getting sick. It seems to be going around and that seems the most plausible thing right now.

Only you don’t feel sick otherwise. You feel fine, other than the blistering headache, and then the memories hit you like a ton of bricks. You aren’t just you… you’re someone else too. You have all of these feelings of another person, someone who seems so familiar and yet so different. It’s an awful feeling and you just wish it would go away. You don’t want to deal with this, not right now.

You try and distract yourself by playing some music but that doesn’t seem to help either. Nothing is helping right now. You try and jog your memory to make fucking sense of this because nothing seems right.

Then you remember all of those weeks that you could never remember before. You remember certain things that happened with certain people and why things are so weird now. It all makes sense to you and you feel sort of bad about it. You shouldn’t, really, because it’s nothing to feel bad about. Things just happen that way sometimes and life moves on.

That’s when it hits you, you need to do something to move on. You’ve been through so much in your life and you need to be able to move past it. It’s the best thing that you can do right now because you have a lot of pain but you’re stronger than that. You’ve always been able to move on in the past and now is no different.

You decide you need to do something drastic. It’s time for a change that would change you from the outside in and not the inside out. You make a couple of calls to see if there are openings anywhere. Sure, it’s last minute but you finally find someone. It is going to take most of the day but it’s fine because you’ll make it in time for karaoke at In Another Castle tonight. You should probably just find someone to cover for you but you don’t want to do that. The last thing you want to do is call more attention to what is going on.

When you get into the chair your stomach is completely in knots. It is a huge change for you; a bigger change than moving to a new city where you don’t know anywhere else. You wonder if maybe you’re just trying to hide your identity so no one can recognize you. You realize that is stupid because people will always recognize you, they always do. It’s the right thing to do, though. If you weren’t nervous you’d be more worried.

The other person asks you if you’re sure about a thousand times. They touch you and tell you how pretty you are. They try and talk you out of it. While you appreciate their concern, you know what needs to be done. They tell you that people sometimes cry through the process but you are certain you won’t.

Halfway through the process you look at yourself in the mirror. It feels like you’re shedding an old part of your life and moving on to the new way of living. It’s making you re-evaluate everything and you know you need to make other changes in your life too. You need to finally get your shit together and be a big girl. It’s for the best really. You ask them to take a picture.

When they are done, you look at yourself in the mirror again. It all feels fresh and new. They look at you with a smile and tell them they can’t believe you didn’t cry. You smirk and tell them I told you so.

Your head still fucking hurts but you’re going to embrace this the best that you can.