"I can't do this." Esme said to herself in the mirror as she braided her hair to the side, completing her signature look. Prim, proper Esme. "I... I can do this." She tried to reassure herself, playing over in her head the reassurances that her therapist had made her memorize in times like this.

You are stronger than you think you are. Esme played in her head, chanting it like a mantra that would somehow calm the bees buzzing in her scalp as she tried to collect her thoughts, stinging certain phrases, certain... not so great thoughts, making them grow and irritate and swell until they could not be ignored. You have been braver than this, and you will be braver than this. Esme recited... though, she wasn't sure if that was actually one of the phrases her therapist had given, or if she had just mushed together inspirational words in her head and spelled out something that resembled encouragement.

"I can do this." Esme verbalized. She knew that if anyone saw her, standing there in front of her bathroom vanity, staring into her own eyes in the mirror, giving herself a pep talk, she'd be either laughed out of the room or sent back to the psych ward that she spent four months in when she was thirteen. "I can make it through today at Degrassi. I can make it through the people staring at me, thinking I'm crazy, watching me and wondering what psycho thing I'll do next... Sorry, not psycho. I know that word is offensive and outdated..." She trailed off, losing track of where her inspirational chant was heading. "I can make it through the judgments. And the laughs. And the jerks making my life a living hell because I ruined my senior year and went from Harvard-bound to repeating a year all out of fear that Zig Novak was going to abandon me." She closed her eyes and inhaled deep, then stepped away from the mirror to examine herself.

Esme eyed herself in the mirror. She scanned every detail, trying to find what exactly it was that didn't feel right. Was it the navy blue plaid pleated skirt with red accents perfectly matched to a pair of red oxford heels that were perfectly accented by white lacy socks? Or was it her precisely placed side braid that hung down from her shoulder past her collar bone? Esme was looking into the mirror, but she wasn't seeing herself. She was seeing... the image of the person that she had tried so hard to be. The precisely styled, excellently put together, blushing beautiful girl who looked like she had no secrets to hide and no skeletons in her closet. The look that says "don't look too closely or you'll see the cracks that I can't quite smooth over". That wasn't who she truly was. And if she was going to be a better person this year, and for the rest of her life, she was going to have to adjust who she saw in the mirror. Make sure that it was the real Esme.

Her fingers slightly shook as she quickly unbraided her dark, thick hair and ran her fingers through it, feeling the slightest dampness from her shower the night before. The hair. The hair was going to change. She tousled her hair with her fingers for a moment, tried to readjust the part of her hair to the middle, do something that made her look different without going too drastic, but none of it clicked. And though her therapist had told her strictly not to act on impulse and to truly think through the implications and possible results before she says or does anything, her body took over and her mind went blank as she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut her own hair until it grazed her collarbones. The cut was rough, but it was nothing she couldn't cover up with a wave of a magic curling wand and a trip to a salon to touch up the cut when she came down from this manic moment.

Next was the clothing. Preppy, demurely dressed Esme was no longer reflective of the impression Esme wanted to give to her fellow students at Degrassi this year. She wanted to represent herself as something more down to earth. Something she was aspiring to. All of the fun and whimsy of "crazy Esme" with none of the... well, craziness. She looked through her closet, but she wasn't finding much. She had pretty much cleared out her closet of anything that didn't look like it could possibly double as a ridiculously fashionable private school uniform or something that Elle Woods would wear in a court scene in the movie Legally Blonde. She settled on something that was a little out of her comfort zone, but definitely made enough of a statement to say "I'm not the same girl you saw spiraling into a complete mental breakdown last year". Which was honestly a pretty tall order for an outfit.

A honey yellow and white gingham cropped tank top and a pair of high waisted black jeans. Not completely out of her comfort zone, but along with the newly chopped off hair, she felt like a whole new Esme. And finally, redemption and a halfway decent second chance at her senior year felt like it was maybe one step closer to possible. In fact, as Esme smiled at her reflection in the mirror, she decided that if she could get through today, she could get through anything. And that was the attitude she was going to bring to the table on the first day of school. Nothing was going to get in the way of her finding the strength and endurance to face the ugly realities of the world instead of ignoring them and getting caught up in things like toxic relationships and drugs. Not a damn thing.