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Sometimes he wonders who he is supposed to be.
It’s a mystery, as he stares at himself in the mirror, wondering who is staring back. Greenish brown eyes, curly, reddish brown hair, freckles. Thin lips, a prominent nose. He doesn’t know if this is actually what he’s supposed to look like naturally, or if this is simply what he believes. He’s forgotten what he looked like before his gift, using it constantly ever since he received it. And as he aged, it became hard to keep track of if he was using it, or keeping his true form, the lines becoming more blurry by the years, as he forgot who he was supposed to be, or if he was even right anymore. It’s as if a stranger is staring back at him, as if something is always wrong, but there is no way for him to check. He can’t drop the current transformation, because he’s always stuck.
It’s impossible to revert back to his original form, when he doesn’t even know what he was supposed to look like without the magic’s intervention. And it’s impossible for him to know, as he had grown up with his gift, his face and body and other features changing so slowly yet quickly at the same time as he got older and went through puberty, with Camilo never having enough time to study himself, and what features were really him, and which were made up, and always put on without him even knowing. How much of himself was real, and how much was an act he wasn’t even aware of?
He was afraid that he would never know. But often when he looked at himself in the mirror, it felt as if he was living his life in someone else’s body.
He almost always lived in someone else’s body anyway. During any single day, he transforms into at least fifty different people. Shifting between bodies is so natural to him, that his body starts to itch if he doesn’t. It’s part of his routine, and something feels wrong if he doesn’t, as if he’s restless, all because of the sudden transformations. He takes on role after role, becoming other people, getting to know them better than he had ever known himself. The only way he’s useful is to help others by being someone else, and never himself. Camilo is a gift that is used, and not a person, and that’s who he has always been. And it leaves him little time to wonder who he actually is, or who he would have become without it.
As if he’s a blank slate, of millions of little pieces from others, while his own identity is completely foreign. Untouched and discovered, with him never having time to reflect, who he really is. Who is Camilo, other than a shapeshifter, and someone ready to immediately become someone else to help, just like a chameleon? He’s afraid of the answer, afraid he won’t like what he sees, or rather, he’s afraid that he’ll never know. As if he’s just a husk for a million bodies, without a person inside. There’s no person fit for his own body, as he doesn’t even know what it properly looks like anymore. So far, all he knew was that it felt wrong. It’s why he shapeshifts so much. He knows everyone else, what they look like, and how they act, but he doesn’t know himself. He’s never even had a chance to know himself, too busy to ever be anyone other than that. For years on end, until he had forgotten the very first glimpse of himself that he had known at the age of five.
Now, he’s a blank slate, as if he had never been anyone at all to begin with.
And it’s scary, being in the body that is supposed to be his own, when he isn’t even sure if he was remembering it correctly. It’s a great fear of his, spending the rest of his life in a body that is supposed to be his, while it actually isn't. What if he is so convinced a body is his, when it is someone else's? He would never be able to tell, because his own body before he received his gift is nothing but a distant memory. As he tries to remember what he had looked like, it’s almost impossible, as the memory had faded, the facial expressions, his body, and even the look of his hair was distant, as if he had never known. He would never truly know what he was supposed to look like, but when he looks into the mirror, he knows that something is wrong.
He doesn’t know if he’s given himself curls that are too tight or too loose. If his skin is the wrong shade, or if he’s given himself too many freckles. Is his nose too big or too small? Are his hands too big? Is he supposed to be right handed, or did he pick up that from other transformations? Does he really have a small scar on his knees from scraping his knee as a kid, or did he remember wrongly and shifted the scar there anyway? Was he supposed to look like this, and were the changes in his face natural and normal from puberty, or because of magical manipulation from guessing?
Was he a stranger? Was he supposed to look completely differently? And if he ever actually remembered what he was supposed to look like, would staring back at that reflection also feel like looking at a stranger? As if he had become a stranger to himself, not even familiar with who he was supposed to be? He would never know.
He feels lost, because he knows that he will never be able to tell what is real, and what isn’t. But right now, he feels like a stranger. Not only to his body, but to himself, because he doesn’t know who he is as a person, not really. He is lost. Everyone thinks they know Camilo, but they only knew the Camilo on the outside, and for his gift. No one knew who he was on the inside, not even himself, as he was still trying to find himself.
And it was way scarier than he ever thought that it would be.
All he wants is an answer, but right now, he is afraid that he will never get one. Because his gift had a burden, and that was to forget himself. While gaining the ability to be everyone else, he had lost the ability to be himself, and he was afraid he would never regain his own identity. Because how do you even regain something when you didn’t even know what to look for?
Especially when it included his own face.