I Had Waited 29 Years for That Day. I Thought That After It Was Over, I Would Finally Be Able to Look in the Mirror Without Feeling Ashamed… But Just Three Days Later, I Locked Myself in the Bathroom and Cried to My Mom, “I Think I Just Made the Biggest Mistake of My Life.”

my brain almost seemed unwilling to accept that the person standing in the mirror was me.

“What if I stay like this?” I whispered.

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“The doctor explained that the first few days would look exactly like this.”

I sat down on the small chair beside the bathroom wall.

“Maybe I looked better before.”

My mother was silent for a long moment.

Then she took my hand.

“You didn’t make this decision in one day. You thought about it for years. Don’t decide that the entire journey was a mistake because of three difficult days.”

But that night, I didn’t believe her.

I barely slept.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the person from the mirror again.

On the fourth day, I didn’t even want to open the camera on my phone.

But before all of this began, I had made myself one