Manly

It is so weird that I wake up in the morning feeling like I've actually slept seven hours but that's how I woke up this morning when my alarm clock pull me out of my warm sleep. I have to change the tone of my alarm, I thought, it was a song I liked but I had started to hate it since it was the one that stole my dreams away.

I sat up, yawned and rubbed my eyes as I moved out from under the blanket. Blindly I looked for my sleepers with my feet lifting them quickly when they touched the cold floor. I stood up and pulled my pajama pants up, for some reason they always hung down my hips when I wake up.

Without turning the lights on, I went to the bathroom and automatically showered, my eyes were open but without seeing the light blue walls or really focusing in anything else. My hands washed my skin as I did every day for the past twenty two years. My father had always said that I showered wrong, I didn't care. He said you were to start from your head down and not from your feet up like I did. I huffed as I randomly thought about it, already cleaned and completely awake. One thing missing: to brush my teeth.

I keep my toothpaste and toothbrush inside a white cabinet with a mirror on its door over the sink. I put the blue paste on my toothbrush, I made a mental note to buy another, I'll soon need a new one. For some reason right before I start cleaning my teeth I always look at myself on the mirror.

After my shower mist had covered the mirror, I cleaned it with my hand and saw my reflection. I saw my eyes first, deep dark brown, the color of the kind of coffee that could keep you awake all night, my short eye lashes... My round face didn't look as round, instead it had angles, my jaw had changed, a shadow covered it. I touched my cheek

"I need to shave" my mind said to me knowing something I didn't. I blinked and focused on my face. I was so accustomed to see my face that I had assumed it was the same and had dismissed the new shape, the strong jaw line and squared forehead, the darker eyebrows, the short hair that I had just combed back with my fingers....even the fact that I had to bend down to properly look at my face on the mirror

I refocused my eyes, noticing my neck wasn't as thin as before and now it had something... "Adam's

apple" my brain informed me. Ok, I said appraising the slightly raised skin over the bone. And I moved my eyes lower, where my frail shoulders and lean arms had been I had broad shoulders and the arms that come with the body I had woken up in.

I looked at myself again, taking in my face, neck and naked shoulders. I looked a lot like my father but leaner. I looked like my brother but younger. I kinda looked like my father's brother but without curls. The man had always been handsome.

I realized this was me. I had gone to bed as a girl and had woken up as a man. I felt pleased, not because I had a new body but because like the other one, it was my body and I felt comfortable in it. Maybe my mind had changed a little, too, I liked the way I looked, I liked it a lot. With a laugh that didn't have my former higher pitch I went out of the bathroom. This was me.