Change

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”
Snip, snip, snip and suddenly she was a completely different person.
She had a sudden moment of terror when she took in her image on in the mirror. A frightening flashback to when she had earlier sported a short hairstyle. How they’d started calling her a boy. How they’d teased her every time she did something ‘girly’ because she was a boy, wasn’t she? Her childhood sweetheart confessing that he’d never thought of her as a girl because girls have long hair. 
Then all of a sudden the memories stopped coming, and she was back in the saloon, paying a surprisingly cheap fee.
She took a deep breath before stepping out.

On Love, my Faults and Mitty

Having been a student of an all girls school for about twelve years, my interaction with boys had been minimal, to say the least. I had had a childhood friend who I once had a crush on but later it grew into a more brotherly affection (at the precise time he started seeing me as a woman. Timing is a bitch). I had had a few guy friends I played Cricket with near my house, but I lost all contact with them once I ‘became’ a girl. A bunch of guy friends at tuition classes, but not many I knew well enough to be versed in ‘male psychology’.

Being in a Catholic girls school gave me the added ‘advantage’ of seeing any male who was even remotely interested in me through tinted glasses. From upper primary classes I’d been taught time and time again that men are strong, scary and sleazy. I had also had a few frightening ‘encounters’ with guys by that time, so I was convinced that nothing good would come from being in a relationship.

And yet, I kept inhaling shoujo manga and certain fictional romances like Pride and Prejudice. I idolized Sakura and Syaoran, a fictional couple who seemed to me have the perfect relationship. It was sweet, understanding and most importantly, they had maximum trust in each other. I desired to meet someone who’d see me in that way.

I mean… look at them!

But that was inhibited by my above mentioned man-fear and low self-esteem.

When I went to college, for the first time (in a looooong time) I was regularly sharing a classroom with guys. They weren’t as scary as I thought they would be. In fact, I found most of them