I’m a tentative writer–my pen creeps across the shadowed page as if my journal does not belong to me, but to the prying eyes of a nonexistent readership. It’s all a performance, if you will; her tortured poet, partner only in life, will pour tears over my mystifying death and then release my calculated private thoughts to the literary world, to be dissected by scholars and outraged, angry students, so I try to write intelligently about the human experience as if I am already history worth remembering. History written about in history books in national curriculums, not forgotten tombstones and fading memories. I’ve sacrificed my entire being, body, and soul, to the crappy literature (it’s probably not literature, but pop fiction) that I write once a month and my non-existent readers, so much that I believe the illusion sprawled in black ink is the girl here, the one whose self feels so forced.

I’d like to believe that I’m more interesting than who I really am–when I lie in bed, I think of looming deadlines and my quiet self and smiling photographs of my friends on my Snapchat story and think to myself, is this fictitious? I am full of so many doubts about the mundane and it feels like they’re constantly being tattooed on my brain, both new doubts and bad habits haunting me from times I knew myself less. It’s hard to escape from it, the little ache that has found its home in my body; it feels almost as if my body is betraying me, from the smallest rumbling to panic attacks–why can’t you just be harmonious–grow and breathe and sway gently in the wind like those roses Dad planted in the backyard, so seamlessly that people take photos and admire them from their screens. They are so beautiful, like Joycean descriptions of snow, except so full of red vivacity and sensitivity and universality of the human spirit (whatever the human spirit is).

Last week, I drank away my anxiety on the dance floor–wine aunt-drunk. In absolute stupor, unravelling in nostalgic and present tunes, I expect to slip away from self-consciousness for a few hours and have a good boogie surrounded by my friends, perhaps even think to myself, ah, you’ve found yourself finally, without needing to travel to Europe or Asia–university is all about finding yourself, finally! Then I’d wobble around in heels acting as if I am the most interesting person in the entire world, acting as if I know who I am. In reality, I become a Picasso painting of myself–fragments of who I want to be, still steeped in past anxieties and half drunkenness. I am exaggerated, my form blurred in the mirror, because of outdated contact lenses that hurt my eyes. To see myself more clearly, I hold up my iPhone to the mirror, loading up my Snapchat.

I closely watch the girl on the screen: a dark silhouette, shoulders illuminated by dim green light. With a click, it’s as if she’s frozen in time.

By Casey D., 19, Melbourne, Australia