Entry — Age 17, three weeks out
Somewhere away from the home they'd lived in for years.
I slept in a hostel last night. Eight people in the room, six of whom snored. I slept better than I have in months.
This morning I went to use the bathroom and stopped in the doorway for a moment because I didn't immediately recognise the person in the mirror.
My hair was shorter. Darker. I've been watching it in mirrors for a week and it's been doing something — shifting slightly at the edges, the colour not quite consistent depending on the light. Last night I had gone to sleep certain it was the same hair I'd always had. This morning it wasn't.
I stood there for a long time. I touched it. It felt like hair. I looked at my hands and they looked like my hands, and then for a moment they didn't, and then they did again.
I don't have an explanation for this. I've been running through them and I don't have one.
And then, on the way back to the bunk to get my boots, they slid across the floor to meet me before I could reach them.
So. Two things, this morning, in a hostel bathroom. Two things the house never let happen.
The power is different out here. Louder, somehow. I thought the problem was me — the ceiling I kept hitting, the pencil that wouldn't move. And then you take away the room and suddenly there's no ceiling, just open air going up and up, and you have to recalibrate everything you thought you knew about what you're capable of.
I think that might be true in more than one direction.
I don't know what I am yet. I don't know if that's frightening or — something else. I'm going to need some time with it. I'm writing it down so I can come back to it when I have words.