“For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, […] and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter’s hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own… so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green curtains, another when Mrs. Jones is not there… and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all.”

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

I have grown exponentially. There is a childlike giddiness in realizing that you react differently than you might have 1, or 3, or 5 years ago. This change, this growth, it is real; it is no longer the item that adults tell you you will possess with hindsight and experience. You have earned it through challenge and anger and you shed the skin of the being you were (although, do not be fooled; she lives within you yet) to reveal someone proud of their change. You are wearing a shiny blue and gold ribbon pinned to your shirt.

That makes it all the more infuriating when I think of you. I know I am me. I am the me I have worked so painstakingly to craft. But when I think of you, I am the me I scream at. I am the me I cower from in my memory and would erase from my mind if I could find a way. I am the me who is scared, insecure, alone. I would shelter her from you if I could, but the me I am now does not exist in my memory. She is alone there. I will sink back within her in search of comfort and warmth, and you will never meet me. You will only see her, and you know what you are capable of doing to her. I hate you for it.

Maybe one day, in the far or near future, I will introduce the two of you. I will warp her into me, and you will be forced with the confrontation, the storm, she deserved to give you but was not strong enough to wield. And then I will feel peace. Or, perhaps, it will make me even angrier, although I cannot imagine the feeling. What can be more violent, more all-encompassing and raging, than my storm?

Regardless, there will be a time where you cannot touch me or her. We will both be free, and I will cradle her in my arms until I am ready to make peace with her existence, both her mistakes and her heartache. She will always be me, but I have not always been her. I have grown.

For now,

G.D.