[ WP ] You wake up on exact date of your 5th birth date in your 5 year old body , with your current memory .

I wake up in my bed, feeling strange. Out of habit I reach to scratch my beard, only to touch a beardless chin. I open my eyes. This is not my bed. Not my current bed in the student dorm. It's the old bed I slept in as a child, my stuffed animals lying like guardians next to me. I look at my hands, at how small they are. 
 
 My parents come into the room, singing Happy Birthday, with a cake. The cake still has the old name on it. Of course it does, they did n't know back then that I'd grow up into the person I am. I try my hardest not to visibly flinch when they call me by that name. 
 
 My mother brushes my hair with fast, angry strokes, muttering about how my hair can get knotted just by looking at it wrong. I try to sit still and not fidget and not cry out in pain. She braids my hair into two braids, Wednesday Addams style, and finish them with two big bows. Then she gives me a deep midnight blue velvet dress to wear. 
 Maybe I was sent back for a reason, maybe to change things and spare myself years of suffering? And just like that, an idea forms in my head. I spent a lot of my childhood trying to be a good little girl so people would n't notice I was actually a boy, puberty a slow torture as I had to watch my body betray me and change into something foreign to me. I remember putting up with ribbons and lacy dresses and pink, as well as the inevitable bruises. Lots of bruises and harsh words, slammed doors, taunts and threats and white knuckles. I remember longing to be rid of the knotty, tangled mane my mother would force into braids every morning. 
 
 I walk into the bathroom and, as if by providence, the scissors my father uses to trim his beard with are still lying on the edge of the sink instead of in the bathroom cabinet I'm too short to reach. My favourite t-shirt, the blue one with a dinosaur on it that's actually from the boy's section, is lying on the washing machine waiting to get folded and put away, along with my grass-stained, patched-up pair of jeans that probably need a wash. Snip-snip is the sound of the future changing irreversibly. The braids lie on the floor like twin snakes. I wriggle out of my dress ( but my current self's mind forces me to fold it neatly and leave it on the washing machine ), and put the t-shirt on instead along with the jeans. 
 I know I'll get bruises for this, and many harsh words, but it'll be worth it. 
 This time, I will celebrate my birthday as the boy that I am, as myself.
