During the day, I am apprehensive. It’s as if the sun is the moon and the rising waves of the ocean,
shimmering like a pixelated video game, are my own tides of anxiety because, who must I be today?
What must I care about today? I rummage through my walk-in closet, fingering the old selves that
my mother birthed from her womb (at first) and disciplined hands, and then I rummage through the
new selves I saw on the advertised mannequin in the store window of UNIQLO and ZARA last week
at the glittering, white shopping centre. I feel the malleability and hollowness of teenage skin and
teenage flesh on the coat hanger and sign because I can no longer slip into the time that I only cared
about a tiny world that consisted of Mum, Dad and me. So reluctantly, I step into the oppressiveness
of ‘Shy Girl’™and stretch the gloves of her calloused hands and the shoes on her feet and hope that
tomorrow, I can fit into ‘Confident Leader destined to be Prime Minister’™ or ‘Social,
Enthusiastic Extrovert’™ forever. ‘Shy Girl’™is for the most part, quiet and serious and has the
thinnest, doughiest, skin of all; it feels dangerously transparent to me and them. She madly blushes
when talking to strangers, does not raise her hand in class and everyone knows her for it. Somedays,
when I miraculously exchange ‘Shy Girl’™ for ‘Confident Leader destined to be Prime
Minister’™, people exclaim: “Wow! I never expect you’d say that. It’s just not…you”. Then, poof!
‘Shy Girl’™is summoned like a desperate breath of air and then she, her likes, her dislikes, her
thoughts, her image, all become merged with mine and the projection of myself.

During the night, I am too tired to be her. I am too tired to be anyone, too tired to care about anything
other than myself and everything in my vision. I strip myself of ‘Shy Girl’™and ‘Confident Leader
destined to be Prime Minister’™and the hundreds of wardrobe changes that I have had throughout
the day and hang them up in my closet for the next day, suppressing them and their anxious thoughts
about everyone they know and school and crushes and friendships and reputation and future just for
the night. It is as if the world and everything I should care about has been lifted off my shoulders.
Leaving nothing but the undefined self in solitude. Nothing will ever be perfect, but this is the closest
I think I’ll ever get: escaping the oppressiveness of projection that I conform to, self-righteous,
patient, kind, generous, peeling off layers and layers of who I should be in order to slide into the
comfort of sheets and be, in the simplest way possible; myself, not one of the many variations of
myself, but the real self in its brimming, glowering confidence. The real self is honest and impulsive in this private space. It allows itself to feel and react explosively, unhindered and unconcerned by collateral damage because there is nobody in its surroundings to absorb it. To howl into artificial light, features of face shadowed by its light. And then afterwards, to contemplate without eyes of judgement and consequence because the curtains and covers are drawn.

Here, I am not fixated.

I am a myriad of colours. Not defined by others, I am chameleon-like, blending into shadows and
walls and literature and moving, never-ending technicolour screens – everything that I have
surrounded myself with, I melt into and eventually, become.

Tomorrow, I will try on another modification. A less-nuanced version that the world will see because
right now, I can’t seem to find the courage or the stability of the true me in its entirety. (Every day,
she shows a little more of herself). But tonight, I will sink into the mattress and sleep well, knowing
that she’s right there (whoever she is), as she promised, and that she has always been.

By Casey D., 19, Melbourne, Australia