This is just a draft I came up with. Not 100% sure I'm gonna use it.
Extract
I looked at the photo. Then I looked in the mirror. I was the girl in the photograph... or at least the girl in the photograph was supposed to be me. My eyes flicked between photograph and mirror over and over again, ignoring the similarities instead focusing on the hidden differences. I was not the girl in the photograph. However much we looked identical; with the same hair, the same eyes, the same way of standing an awkward position. I was not that girl, and she was not me.
The photograph in question had been taken the previous Spring, at a high school showcase. I had been the girl who was asked backstage to add freestyle gymnastics into the 2nd year dance piece. I had been the girl everyone congratulated afterwards when I pulled it off without falling flat on my face or accidentally knocking into someone else. I was a totally different girl back then.
I watched the girl who looked like me. The girl from the photograph. It was as if she were living my life and I had been relegated to a mere observer. I watched my family embrace her without suspicion. It hurt to think they couldn't recognise that this version of me was an imposter. An imposter who had intruded on my life and stolen my family and friends as easily as stealing a toy from a baby. Yet could I really blame her. It had only been a few hours but she was already better at living my life than I was. She was a better daughter, a better friend, a better student. All the things I found hard she could do perfectly. Just like the girl in the photograph would have done. Just like I would have done, had I not been broken.
And with that I started to disappear, piece by piece, until all that was left was the empty shell that passed itself off as me.Silence and solitude took over my life as gradually the people around me forgot that I had even existed.
For a time I watched as life went on around me. I was a spectator in my own life, but after a while even that was hard to hold on to. I let it slip away and life, if you call it that, became a monotonous routine of sleeping and eating and sleeping some. Sleep never seemed to come quick enough or last long enough.
The photograph in question had been taken the previous Spring, at a high school showcase. I had been the girl who was asked backstage to add freestyle gymnastics into the 2nd year dance piece. I had been the girl everyone congratulated afterwards when I pulled it off without falling flat on my face or accidentally knocking into someone else. I was a totally different girl back then.
I watched the girl who looked like me. The girl from the photograph. It was as if she were living my life and I had been relegated to a mere observer. I watched my family embrace her without suspicion. It hurt to think they couldn't recognise that this version of me was an imposter. An imposter who had intruded on my life and stolen my family and friends as easily as stealing a toy from a baby. Yet could I really blame her. It had only been a few hours but she was already better at living my life than I was. She was a better daughter, a better friend, a better student. All the things I found hard she could do perfectly. Just like the girl in the photograph would have done. Just like I would have done, had I not been broken.
And with that I started to disappear, piece by piece, until all that was left was the empty shell that passed itself off as me.Silence and solitude took over my life as gradually the people around me forgot that I had even existed.
For a time I watched as life went on around me. I was a spectator in my own life, but after a while even that was hard to hold on to. I let it slip away and life, if you call it that, became a monotonous routine of sleeping and eating and sleeping some. Sleep never seemed to come quick enough or last long enough.