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.

resembling a type

He's dressed in shabby street chic that could be authentic, if authentic still means anything these days. It probably doesn't matter. He's still got the smile of a predator. She sees his type everywhere these days, because subversive is cool. Sometimes they're legit poor-ass punk rock trash like her, sometimes they're corporate kids slumming it. In the end it doesn't really matter if the predator's from your social strata or not.

The fact that the corporate kids are infiltrating is a problem on its own, but it's hard enough to get out of bed in the morning when the shower smells like sulfur and the furnace smells like burnt rubber and there's scars on her hands she doesn't recognize and a twinge in her elbow she can't explain. When her friends have finally stopped pretending they like her and all she wants is a moment of fucking peace and now--

"I don't think I've seen you here before."

"Fuck off," she says, and he keeps on smiling.

"I see how it is," he says, and then he flags down the bartender. "Her tab's on me."

She leaves over his protests. It's raining and windy and cold even though it's fucking April and she didn't bring a raincoat because it was sunny and windy this morning and she thought--well, never mind what she thought. Her jacket's not up to the task and she's freezing for it and she's worrying about her arm and she doesn't want to call a car or ride the bus or walk because all of those are places where some other asshole might try to chat her up. She doesn't want to bike because her arm hurts and what if that makes it worse?

She rides anyway. The electricity's out when she gets home so she can't even make tea, so she just lies there in the dark in her wet clothes and tries to work up the will to change into something dry. Later, her asshole roommate will probably yell at her for getting the couch wet, and then he'll yell at her for not contributing anything to the household. Fuck him. And when she gets back online her friends will yell at her for having opinions she doesn't have. And maybe if she were a better person they wouldn't think she's so shitty, even if they're wrong about the particulars. Or if she were a person at all.

(A memory: her roommate--the asshole one--is shouting at her again and the roommate who moved out last month is telling him to leave her alone. He doesn't, of course, but people don't stick up for her very often, so she remembers it, and she appreciates it, even if she doesn't know how to say it because she's not enough of a person to express these thoughts. It's a weirdly positive memory, despite everything.)

She changes into something dry before the asshole comes home and spreads her wet clothes out on the floor of her room in the hopes they'll dry faster. She's not sure it helps. It probably doesn't when it's this cold. But, well, it can't hurt, right?

So she tries to sleep, which lately means lying in bed with her eyes closed (or sometimes open, staring at the shadows and the ceiling, as if maybe there's some truth to be found in the patterns) trying to ignore her racing thoughts until she exhausts herself and morning comes. She's never sure if she gets any sleep on those nights, but it seems to help.

If she had any friends left she might talk to them, but she doesn't, and anyway the power's out and she doesn't have a smartphone. So instead she lies awake and thinks of predators who disguise themselves as one of her own and wonders what it's like to be a real person, and dreams that everything's gone wrong and it's all her fault and she should have known better and everyone everyone everyone knows. Or maybe that's not a dream at all.

And even though her dreams are mostly nightmares and her thoughts are mostly self-destructive, it still takes all her will to drag herself out of bed.