After waiting at the bus stop for half an hour, I finally managed to board one of the intercity buses. Prison made me step outside the city I grew up in for the first time.
I sat next to a middle-aged man who also had a black backpack. He had a lot of gray in his beard. Seeing him made me realize I didn't even know what I looked like anymore. I couldn't remember the last time I'd looked in a mirror in prison. Maybe I had, but I couldn't recall.
I'm still 23 or 24, or maybe 22. I need to do the math. My birthday... was 1999. I can't remember the day or month, but I think it's the right year. I used to tell my friends, all excited, that I was born in 1999, because it was such a cool number. But then I realized I wasn't so special after all. People born in 2000 kind of ruined it for me.
Anyway, I'm still 23, and I can barely remember my own face or birthday. It's pretty bad, but I didn't care much about fixing it back then. I just preferred quick, temporary solutions.
I rummaged through my backpack for a small mirror a fellow inmate had given me. I found it under my clothes and looked at it. I had a beard too! But not as much as the guy next to me. Mine was barely noticeable and didn't really suit me. I felt like a grown man. A man who, after three years of struggling with life and countless failures, was staring curiously at the small mirror in his hand.
I turned my face this way and that, trying to see myself from different angles. In every angle, the only thing that was the same was the tiredness in my eyes and the frown lines above them. So I gave up looking and tried to ignore everything in the world, even myself and my thoughts, and just get some sleep.