Imago

At first it just seemed like a lack of self-confidence; a little shyness, a little social anxiety or low self-esteem, perhaps. Then there was a difficulty about being seen in public and she knew she was making herself inaccessible to other people, but didn’t know how to stop.

She wanted to just get everything over with, but she was never truly self-destructive. She flirted with the idea of suicide sometimes, the way other girls would flirt with pin-ups of movie stars. She was fascinated by pain and what made people hurt, and how to stop it, but there didn’t seem to be a reason.

Then came the first coup de foudre, the unbidden flood of ideas. Perhaps they had always been there, perhaps it was more gradual than she’d thought, but now these ideas wouldn’t go away. Everything she wanted to keep inside spilled out, every secret she’d been told to keep was given up, and every confidence was betrayed.

A flood of memory, both real and imaginary besieged her. She had wanted to sever all ties to her past, to be re-imagined as someone else, someone whole. Instead she got lost in her past, only now she couldn’t remember what was real.