Two Versions of Me

There are two versions of me.

The first one walks into rooms before I even speak. She is polished. Predictable. Easy to understand. Her hair falls straight, controlled, almost rehearsed. People nod at her. They don’t question her. They don’t stare too long. She fits.

The second version… she takes up space.

Her hair reaches out before she does. It coils, it shrinks, it defies gravity and expectations at the same time. She is softer but somehow louder. People look twice. Sometimes they compliment her. Sometimes they don’t know what to say at all.

So I learned to choose.

Interviews? Version one.
First impressions? Version one.
Places where I don’t want to explain myself? Definitely version one.

But on quiet days… days when I want to feel like myself, I let version two breathe. I let my hair exist the way it was meant to. No hiding. No adjusting.

At first, it felt like balance. Like strategy.

Until one day, I caught my reflection changing between the two—and I couldn’t answer a simple question:

Which one is actually me?

Is it the version the world accepts without hesitation?
Or the one that feels like home, even when the world hesitates?

I realized something uncomfortable…
I wasn’t just switching hairstyles. I was switching identities.

One for survival.
One for truth.

And the more I kept choosing between them, the more distant I felt from both.

So now, I’m learning something new.

Not how to choose between the two versions—
but how to stop splitting myself in the first place.

Because maybe the real version of me
isn’t the one that fits
or the one that resists…

It’s the one that no longer asks for permission to exist.

And maybe, just maybe,
she’s been there all along—
waiting for me to stop hiding behind the switch.