Girl Now

Every morning you looked in the mirror. You weren’t sure why- it was always the same sight greeting you, and it wasn’t a very appealing one. Your skin wasn’t smooth and snowy white like your sister’s, it was pale and pimply. Your hair wasn’t a sleek and shiny black like your mom’s, it was stringy and dry. Your body wasn’t tall and strapping like your dad’s, it was skinny and hunched. And the extra fat that contributed to the women in your family’s… assets, was instead gathered around your midsection. No wonder you hadn’t had a girlfriend since that one week in freshman year. You didn’t even want to date you.

And then, that morning, you woke up. And suddenly… you did.

Your eyes flickered open at the first rays of morning light, and immediately you could feel something was different. You couldn’t be sure what yet, still too drowsy to put a real thought together- but you knew there was something. Felt it, in your body, your skin, your fat, the way it was spread over your body. You felt lighter, but fuller too, condensed, with unfamiliar new pockets of weight spread across your body. And there was something else different too, something your half-awake mind couldn’t have ever hoped to put together- something missing.

Rubbing your eyes with strangely slight hands, you trudged to your closet door, swinging it open, ready for the same sight you’d seen every day since you hit puberty- no jawline, pudgy gut, acne-ridden forehead, skinny, weak, depressing, male-

And then you were confronted with the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen.

Her eyes were blue, like yours. Her hair was a dark blackish brown, like yours. She was 5’9. She was pale. She was wearing your sweatpants, clinging tighter than ever to her wide hips, and your baggy white T-shirt, now draped over her full chest. And that was about where the similarities ended.

But she was you. You were her. Meaning… you were a her. Christ. You were a girl. How were you a girl??

And even then, in the back of your mind, the first seeds began to grow of a thought besides confusion or shock or the lingering suspicion you were losing your mind…

Fuck, am I hot.