which i do not

Back where I used to live--I almost wrote 'back home', which says a lot I guess--they still tell stories about me. I haven't had the nerve to ask what about so it's a mystery to me, but when I say my name people get this look and say "Oh, YOU'RE Ellie?" like meeting me is an exciting point in their lives, or at least like it answers some questions.

This version of me lives on even when I'm not there, and everyone there fucking loves her. It's nice, really, to have all the first impressions taken care of, to have everyone treat you like an old friend even when you've just met them, but it's uncomfortable, too. I don't know who this version of me is, whether she's anything like me. I'm afraid that if I stay there long enough the version everyone loves will die, and I'll have a lot of ruined expectations to deal with.

It's a thing I've been obsessed with for as long as I've been obsessed with stories, really: that each of us are two people. There's the real us, and there's the stories everyone tells about us, and they aren't the same thing, and sometimes, if you're either very lucky or very unlucky, they're not even very similar, and the stories take on a life of their own.

And then at some point I realized that maybe there's a third person, which are the stories we tell ourselves. And I think the real thing that frightens me, at the end of the day, is that just maybe it's this third self who isn't anything like the real me. That maybe, if I spend too much time with these people who love me, that I'll find out I'm not who I thought I was after all.